RGM

In an article by Graham R. Mitchell entitled Instill the Entrepreneurial Mindset, Mitchell refers extensively to Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan's publication Entrepreneurial Mindset.. For more information about the Industrial Research Institute, click here.

• Posted: Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Discovery-driven planning. Happily, though, there are alternative systems specifically designed to support intelligent investments in future growth. One such process, which Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillan call "discovery driven planning," has the potential to greatly improve the success rate. Discovery-driven planning essentially reverses the sequence of some of the steps in the stage-gate process. Its logic is elegantly simple. If the project teams all know how good the numbers need to look in order to win funding, why go through the charade of making and revising assumptions in order to fabricate an acceptable set of numbers? Why not just put the minimally acceptable revenue, income, and cash flow statement as the standard first page of the gate documents? The second page can then raise the critical issues: "Okay. So we all know this is how good the numbers need to look. What set of assumptions must prove true in order for these numbers to materialize?" The project team creates from that analysis an assumptions checklist – a list of things that need to prove true for the project to succeed. The items on the checklist are rank ordered, with the deal killers and the assumptions that can be tested with little expense toward the top. McGrath and MacMillan call this a "reverse income statement." The entire article can be purchased at www.hbsp.harvard.edu

• Posted: Monday, January 07, 2008

In an article entitled What Can You Do with a Liberal Arts Degree? Plenty!, Rita McGrath is quoted, "Employers are starting to value some of the skills a liberal arts degree teaches, including clear writing and communication skills, intellectual curiosity, and the ability to synthesize and draw patterns from confusing and ambiguous data," says Rita Gunther McGrath, an associate professor at Columbia Business School and author of "The Entrepreneurial Mindset" (Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

• Posted: Monday, January 07, 2008

Jake Anderson, a Harvard School of Business student, has written a paper analyzing the disruptive nature of Google Docs...
"Interestingly, the process of beta testing all of its programs through its general customer base continues today, allowing Google to effectively experiment and continually improve its offerings. In a way, this method of discovery-driven planning has created a culture that supports the efforts of creating a disruption profit engine at Google."

To read the entire paper, click here.

• Posted: Monday, December 17, 2007

Excerpt from HBR Brief: "You are weighing a major strategic venture--a first-time alliance, a new market, an innovative product. Beware: business history is littered with stories about smart companies that hemorrhaged multiple millions from ventures gone bad.

Why such massive losses? Too many firms use conventional planning to manage their ventures, say McGrath and MacMillan. They make predictions about a venture's potential based on their established businesses. And they treat the assumptions underlying those predictions-- "The product will sell itself," "We'll have no competitors"--as facts. By the time they realize a key assumption was flawed, it's too late to stanch the bleeding.

How to avoid this scenario? As your venture unfolds, use a disciplined process to systematically uncover, test, and (if necessary) revise the assumptions behind your venture's plan. You'll expose the make-or-break uncertainties common to ventures. And you'll address those uncertainties at the lowest possible cost--so you don't set your venture on the path to ruin."

Read the entire article here.

• Posted: Monday, November 26, 2007

Subscribe

Sign up for low volume regular updates.