Using the movie exhibition industry as its central case study, a team of researchers studied how the entry of a new movie theatre impacts an incumbent’s theatre movie choices. From the perspective of movie theatres, the movies that bring in more patrons (for example, the big-budget blockbusters or highly popular, recently released movies) are more […]
Read More… from Why Increasing Demand Is Not Always the Answer to New Competition
Entrepreneurs innovating in the technology space often lack the know-how or “specialized complementary assets” within their companies to successfully commercialize their innovations. Consequently, to date, the academic literature on this subject has advised them to contract with or license the commercialization to incumbent companies that already have an established market presence. In the short term […]
Read More… from Should Technology Innovators Participate in the Commercialization Process?
Companies want shareholders who share their long-term investment horizon, according to a survey of 138 North American investor relations professionals. More than 90% of the companies surveyed describe their ideal shareholder as one with a long-term perspective. The reason: by giving companies the freedom to make strategic decisions and long-term investments, long term-focused shareholders help […]
Read More… from The Impact of Ideal Vs Problematic Shareholders
Traditionally, industry-leading companies used to be large conglomerates that gained their dominant competitive advantage through an accumulation of assets and positions, which gave them unbeatable economies of scale. Thanks to the diversity of their portfolios, these conglomerates had a wide reach, allowing them to pursue short-term profitability and growth wherever they could find it. Today, […]
Read More… from What Your Company Can Learn from Supercompetitors
Traditional closed business models still dominate in today’s business world, but more and more companies are looking at the opportunities created through open collaboration and exchange with business model partners. Pioneering companies such as SAP put themselves at the centre of a vibrant ecosystem of active partners. The question for corporate executives is when to […]
Read More… from Is There an Open Business Model Right for Your Company?
What is the basis for a company’s competitive advantage? Traditionally, this question elicits one of two answers: 1) Industry structure. Finding the product-market space within a particular industry that is optimal for your company: in this space you can establish a monopolistic or at the least an oligopolistic position through various barriers to entry. 2) […]
Read More… from Why Companies from Emerging Markets Are Putting the Heat on Multinationals
Many managers believe that quality is something that they as managers and decision-makers can control. Quality is internal and stable, unlike prices, which are subject to changing market conditions. Although prices are set internally, of course, these outside market pressures effectively, in the view of managers, take price decisions out of their hands (for example, […]
Read More… from Do Your Managers – Responses to Market Results Damage Profits?
The most basic business is product-based, involving the manufacturing, assembling and/or delivery of a product. A different type of business, once rare but becoming more and more common, is platform-based, involving creating the context for two or more third parties to interact. EBay and Match.com, for example, were created as platform-based businesses: using technological innovations, […]
Read More… from How to Turn a Product-Focused Company into a Platform Business
Around 20 years ago, academics and consultants Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema identified three ‘value disciplines’ or models followed by top-performing companies: operational excellence, customer-intimacy and product leadership. The second, essentially an advanced form of customer-centricity, is usually the one that’s hardest to emulate. One of the difficulties with the customer-intimacy model is that it […]
“Strategy is often like desert rain. Before the raindrops leave the desert floor, they evaporate, creating little or no effect below” — George Labovitz and Victor Rosansky, The Power of Alignment (Wiley, 1997). Failure rates for strategy execution are notoriously high: estimates by academics and consultants range from 40 to 90%. It’s no surprise, then, that […]
