Innovative thinking can be applied to the strategic planning of an organization to create new opportunities and boost market performance. Strategic Innovation is the creation of growth strategies, new product categories, services, or business models that change the market and generate significant new value for consumers, customers, and the organization. Strategic Innovation takes the road less traveled – it challenges an organization to look beyond its established business boundaries and to create possibilities in an open-minded and creative environment. It has been seen that focusing on the short-term aspects typically yields short-term results, however, firms seeking to make significant breakthroughs identify both, big and innovative ideas. Strategic Innovation calls for a holistic approach that operates on multiple levels. First, it blends non-traditional and traditional approaches to business strategy, deploying the practices of “Industry Foresight”, “Consumer/Customer Insight” and “Strategic Alignment” as a foundation, and supplementing them with more conventional approaches and Continue reading
Strategic Management Tools
Strategic Lenses
Organisations strategic issues are commonly analysed from different strategy lenses. Strategic lenses are a concept of strategic management. The lenses are different ways of viewing strategy development. It examines the flow of tasks and information, or how you get things done. Each lens reveals many different traits and qualities. Using the strategic lens, one looks to optimize workflow to meet the goals and objectives of the company. This article a will cover four angles from which strategy can be viewed and implemented on a corporate level; they are strategy as design, strategy as experience, strategy as ideas and strategy as discourse. 1. Strategy as a Design This takes the view that strategy development can be a local process in which the forces and constraints on the organisation are weighted carefully through analytic and evaluative techniques to establish clear strategy direction. This creates conditions in which carefully planned strategy implementation should Continue reading
A New Business Strategy: Familiarity Matrix
Roberts and Berry devised a technique for selecting optimum diversification action plans for firms wishing to enter new product-markets called the familiarity matrix. It helps strategists decide which product-markets to enter and how. Its two axes, familiarity with market factors and technology or service, are both divided into three values: Base, new familiar, and new unfamiliar. The market dimension refers to the amount of knowledge possessed by the diversifying company of various characteristics of the market and the competitors within it. The authors distinguish between the newness of, and the familiarity with, the market for a product-service. Newness of a market is the extent to which the company has previously targeted it. Markets with which the company has prior experience, conceivably by selling old or existing products in it, are called base markets. Markets with which no such prior exposure exists are called new. Whether a new product is base Continue reading
Top 3 Strategy Development Tools in Business
In the business world, strategy refers to the models using to make the right decisions that help organizations achieve set targets. It is, therefore, important that business people invest in understanding the various strategy development tools, their benefits, and their limitations. Having in-depth knowledge about strategy and how to select the right strategy tools, can businesses become more efficient and productive. There are several strategy development tools for use in the business world; what’s important is to know which strategy tool to use in a given circumstance. The main goal of using business strategy tools is to implement strategic plans in companies and help create economic moats. Some of the standard strategy development tools are; PESTEL, Five Forces, Resource-Based View, Cross Impact Analysis, and SWOT Analysis. In this article, only three important strategy development tools will be discussed. These strategy tools include; PESTEL, Five Forces, and SWOT Analysis. PESTEL analysis Continue reading
Business Excellence Implementation in Organizations
For business to be successful, organizations need to realize that business excellence is a tool which helps them translate their plan into action and is a way of executing strategy. The best way to implement ‘business excellence’ practices in any organization is to balance the differential elements or variables of ‘business excellence’ models in such a way that development is strongly aligned to organizational imperatives. The successful implementation of ‘business excellence’ practices requires focused leadership whose concern for improvement (excellence) or financial necessity outweighs their attachment to traditional norms. One of the major issues faced by organizations implementing business excellence or quality management practices is the change in the culture of organizations as ‘business excellence’ implementation process may need to change the current work practices. Implementation Process The three aspects which should form an essential ingredient of the business excellence system are program design, leadership support and effective execution. Apart Continue reading
Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)
Organizational Conflicts are resolved mostly through behavioral measures. Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument is one of the tools used to assess an individual’s behavior in conflict situations. Research has shown that there are five basic styles or modes for handling conflict. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument provides a profile of individuals and teams that indicates the gamut of conflict-handling skills which one uses in the kinds of conflict situations one faces. Five basic ways of addressing conflict, namely Avoidance, Collaboration, Compromise, Competition and Accommodation were identified by Thomas and Kilman. This is suited for organizational conflicts. 1. Avoidance Avoid or postpone conflict by ignoring it, changing the subject, etc. Avoidance can be useful as a temporary measure to buy time or as an expedient means of dealing with very minor, non-recurring conflicts. In more severe cases, conflict avoidance can involve severing a relationship or leaving a group. If we avoid discussing Continue reading