Interesting application of options idea to “Green” Energy programs
A colleague of mine drew to my attention an NPR story about the Federal government's plans to develop green technologies. In many ways, the approach echoes options reasoning:
Many small bets
Substantial upside if the opportunity is successful
Less concern about the rate of failure than the cost of failure
Genuine uncertainty
A pretty interesting approach.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on June 13, 2011
Prioritization - never an easy thing
Scott Anthony of Innosight wrote a great blog post: 3 ways to prioritize a long list of ideas which provides some good insight into how to start.
I'll add to that:: I also try to think of contrasts. Good projects (and what made them good) vs. not so good (and what made them that way). Good customers vs. not so. Great opportunities vs. things you wish you hadn't done...and eventually you can begin to discern the patterns that make some things desirable and others not. That can eventually lead to something as disciplined as a scorecard, which I've written about in various books. Should I put a sample on the tools page? Let me know....
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- Posted Rita McGrath on April 05, 2011
Uncertainty and risk in discovery driven planning
I was recently fortunate enough to be teaching in a very interesting program for strategy consultants at IBM. One of their senior leaders, an ex-BCG guy, pointed out to me that I really could use a picture to communicate the value of Discovery Driven Growth. Here, therefore is his suggestion! What it basically shows you is how uncertainty is brought down simultaneously with investment increasing so that you tie the level of investment you are making to the level of uncertainty you face. Pretty interesting idea.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on July 24, 2010
Idea generation is seldom the problem
So, you've decided that its time to get out from under that black cloud your business has been in for the last two years and start thinking about growth again. If you're a senior leader or CEO, what do you do next? If you're like many, you'll gather together a group of important people in your organization and start brainstorming about new growth opportunities for your company, hoping that the great ideas coming out of the session will catapult your organization to a new growth trajectory.
Hmmm. Not so fast. For starters, most companies don't lack for good ideas - just ask a randomly selected group of employees and you'll be flooded with suggestions for how the business could be improved. The dilemma is that many of these are not going to be breakthrough concepts. To get those, you really need some kind of framework, like the lenses approach we take in MarketBusters or some other structured way to stimulate your thinking. Blank sheets of paper are terrifying! Secondly, most senior leaders (with all due apologies) are quite removed from the customer experiences and therefore can come up with stuff that looks good on paper but may not work at all in real life. Have a look at any series of senior-level decisions to do new things (often with acquisitions) and you'll see what I mean (Bebo, anyone?).
What senior leaders can do instead is to foster the development of an innovation and growth system in the organization that can take the ideas that are floating around, scale the best of them and commit a convincing set of resources to them so that they actually have a chance to succeed in the marketplace. The problems senior folks need to address are often legion: silos, poor resource allocation processes, risk-aversion, negative handling of failures and disappointments, sclerotic budgeting systems, slow decision-making...if you're going to get them focused on growth, those are the things that need to be addressed.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on July 24, 2010
Paying attention to unconventional “links” in a customers’ consumption chain
I've often encouraged executives to pay attention to the customers' complete consumption chain rather than focusing just on what they do, sell or make. One of my colleagues forwarded me a fascinating article from the New York Times describing how retailers are doing this by helping customers get loans, provide financing or otherwise solve the problem that many of their customers just don't have the money to do business. Good food for thought - to think through what barriers to doing business are, and how they might be addressed.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on July 12, 2010
