Future Forum 2010
Four Chicago Business Authors Offer Insights for Competing in the New Business Landscape
Chicago business authors (from left) Scott Davis, Rich Horwath, Bridget Brennan, and Adam Hartung are joined by event moderator Michael Arndt.
Was your business strategy for 2009 to “hold your breath and wait until it’s over?” Or was yours one of those companies ― like Virgin, Apple and Google ― that found a way to make money hand-over-fist while watching the competition scramble to survive? If your company belongs to that second category, you've likely learned that the world of business has changed forever. The age-old strategy of “defend and extend” simply doesn’t work anymore (or at least not for very long).
Simply put, there are new rules to the global game of business. On November 10, 2009, four Chicago business authors,Bridget Brennan (Why She Buys), Scott Davis (The Shift), Adam Hartung (Create Marketplace Disruption), and Rich Horwath (Deep Dive), teamed up at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management (LFGSM)’s FutureForum 2010: Competing in a New Business Landscape. Along with moderator Michael Arndt of BusinessWeek, they offered insights on what it takes to compete and spur growth in 2010 and beyond.
Here’s some advice you can use today ― straight from Brennan, Davis, Hartung and Horwath ― on how to navigate the new business landscape:
1. Don’t be the same company you were in 2009. Don’t expect that you can simply repeat what you did last year and get similar results this year. It’s time to reinvent yourself, move fast and look forward. The companies that will survive in this new fast-paced, global economy are those that ask themselves what the future is going to look like and start planning around that. This means paying attention to the competition and looking outside the box to discover unexpected sources of insight coming in from the fringes; it means looking at your competitors for answers, not your customers; it means being ready for disruption and being ready to color outside the lines to operate in ways you’ve never operated before. [For more on marketplace disruption, consider picking up a copy of Adam Hartung’s Create Marketplace Disruption.]
2. Don’t continue to under leverage your marketers. Marketing is often underleveraged and marginalized. Those who are successful in today's market have made a leap, however, and have shifted from being "tactician marketers" focused primarily on making incremental improvements to become "visionary marketers" who play a central role in driving demand and organizational growth. It is time for marketers to step up and take a different profile within their organizations. One shift that is difficult for many marketers to grasp is that you don’t own your brand: Your customers do. They are the ones driving purchasing decisions, influencing others to buy either from you or from your competitors. You must learn to influence that network — building relationships, gaining a strong understanding of what your customer is looking for and capitalizing on this knowledge. [To learn more about this and the other shifts marketers need to make to transform into visionary growth leaders, pick up The Shift.]
3. Start thinking about women. If the consumer economy had a gender, it would be female. If the business economy had a gender, it would be male. That’s why it can be said that women are our number one global opportunity. Women purchase 80 percent of all consumer goods, yet the majority of product innovation and marketing in corporate America is led by men. Corporations depend on female consumers but often miss enormous opportunities because they don’t have women in critical positions, offering insights and nuances needed to reach this underserved market.
Is there a reason it took this long for Kimberly Clark to come up with gender-specific Depends® adult underwear? Kudos to them for finally realizing that men and women have different anatomy. Smart companies know that “the future is female.” Hire more women in key positions in your company. And reach out to female consumers, whether creating products for them or the dozens of people for whom they shop each year. [Want to learn more about the power of the “female factor?” Pick up a copy of Bridget Brennan’s Why She Buys.]
4. Cancel your annual strategic meeting. Want to anticipate and react more quickly to changes in your business and your industry? Then turn strategy from an annual pilgrimage to a daily dialogue. Start holding weekly pow-wows. Why? Because new growth comes from new thinking, and thinking done at a conference eight months ago at a Holiday Inn is likely to now be old, stale and worthy of the shredder. Amazon.com CEO Jeffrey Bezos spends four hours a week discussing strategy, not because he thinks meetings are fun (well, maybe he might), but because he realizes the strategic plan he had in place last week won’t work in a few more days because of how quickly the market continues to shift and change. [Wish you and your colleagues were better strategic thinkers? Then pick up a copy of Rich Horwath’s Deep Dive.]
5. Write down five new insights you’ve gleaned about your company recently. Sit down tomorrow morning and figure out five new insights into your company. Unless we’re actively generating insights, we’re not taking advantage of our experience. And there’s a big difference between experience and expertise. As Horwath reminds us, just because you’ve been breathing for 45 years doesn’t mean you’re getting any better at it. No amount of strategic planning is going to rescue your company if your plan doesn’t start with new ideas and new insights.
6. Pick five things not to spend money on. Good business is about tradeoffs. We’ve all seen companies squander massive resources in recent years and fail miserably, despite deep pockets and highly paid executives at the helm. The lesson to learn is that how we allocate our resources is ten times more important than how much we spend. Companies often spend too many resources doing what feels comfortable or familiar. Instead, they need to start allocating funds and resources to doing new things. Stop doing things that don’t need to be done and focus on the things that do. Sounds simple, but it’s not. Spend time, a lot of time, thinking about where your time and money is best invested.
7. Develop a new, strategic partnership. Explore the possibility of partnering with a company you have nothing in common with ― not products, not customers. More and more of today’s successful companies are developing strategic partnerships with noncompetitive companies. Philips Electronics and Swarovski Crystal, for example, have recently teamed up to develop a whole new line of products for women, including crystal "bling" for cell phones and hip, dangly combination earrings/earbuds for MP3 players. The result: Swarovski gets a share of the electronic marketplace and Philips gets a share of female consumers. Now that’s smart thinking.
8. If you’re not a large corporation, stop trying to act like one. The smaller your business, the bigger your personality should be. Smaller companies trying to look like Walmart are going to fail, because no one is better at being Walmart than Walmart. Small companies have to find a way to stand out ― to be truly and unapologetically different, from their products and services, to their employee culture and advertising campaigns.
The future is here. Are you ready?
Companies must be agile, flexible, fluid and innovative to compete in the complex and changing business environment of 2010. This means moving quickly to wherever value is generated and getting products to market faster than ever before. Whether you are a small company or a huge conglomerate, all business today is fast-paced and global, and the business rulebook has changed forever. If you’re not energized by and prepared for the challenges and opportunities of this new business landscape, you simply won’t survive.
- Shannon Sweetnam
FutureForum 2010: Competing in a New Business Landscape was hosted by Lake Forest Graduate School of Management on November 10, 2009, in collaboration with BusinessWeek and Menttium Corporation.