Posted by Stephen Wunker on Wed, Feb 01, 2012 @ 03:13 PM
Fiat's return to the United States has been preordained since the company took control of Chrysler in 2009. Yet the way it chose to enter the U.S. was far from certain, and its path speaks volumes about the perils and potential of creating new categories. Fiat has launched through stand-alone dealerships emphasizing Italian style and built to handle substantial traffic,
despite there being just one model available at first. It also has kept advertising minimal. In other words, it has inverted the traditional model of launching a new car. This heresy has earned the wrath of the industry press, which has attacked Fiat for slow initial sales. Yet the launch -- while not ideally executed -- follows a strategy that works in building new markets for the long-term. Read more in my piece for Harvard Business Review.
Stephen Wunker is the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and the author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't. Read more of our perspectives on winning in emerging markets.
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Mon, Jan 23, 2012 @ 09:37 AM
Research in Motion (RIM) has a new CEO today. Imagine the list of strategic challenges confronting Thorsten Heins. Not only is his company in near free-fall, but his industry is moving at warp speed. How can leaders plan strategy in such uncertainty?
Looking across strategic planning efforts, we can identfy six lessons for how to approach the task. The key is to break from traditional approaches to strategizing and embrace a process suited to uncertain and typically contentious environments. Read more in my piece for Harvard Business Review.
Stephen Wunker is the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't (McGraw-Hill, 2011).
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Wed, Jan 18, 2012 @ 05:03 AM
Samsung's plan to invest $41 billion -- this year -- is a bold but well-calculated strategic move. In industries with high fixed costs, beware the free-spending titan; it will happily up-end the
economics of would-be competitors. A big reason the company can confidently make this
investment is because of its forward integration from electrical components into devices. It can create markets to consume the output from its big bets on new plants and R&D. Read more in my piece for Forbes.
Stephen Wunker is Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't.
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Fri, Jan 13, 2012 @ 09:22 PM
The Bajaj RE60 is a sinfully ugly car with a one-cylinder engine, simple engineering, and a lousy name. It's also a brilliant illustration of how to target new markets. India's Bajaj has chosen to
pioneer the ultra low-end car market by laser targeting an interesting audience -- rickshaw
drivers. Read more about the compelling logic of this foothold market strategy in my piece for Forbes.
Stephen Wunker is the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and the author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't.
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Wed, Nov 23, 2011 @ 01:26 PM
Eager heads of businesses plotting growth strategies often tackle new markets by applying the approaches that have worked time and again for established market segments. After all, these are the methods that are taught widely in business schools, and they are analytically robust. The result is a blizzard of graphs, detailed benchmarks, and carefully drawn trend lines. It takes hard work to package these findings together. Alas, the product is often worthless. I know: in 1997, I used that type of analysis to tell an IT company that the Internet was too small to matter.
In Canada's leading business publication, the Ivey Business Journal, I detail five ways in which strategy for new markets can be completely different from longstanding approaches to established markets. Frequently the right growth strategies for new markets are counter-intuitive, but they makes sense in the rapidly-shifting environment of emerging industries. Much as Newtonian physics breaks down at a nano-particle level, the dynamics of new markets follow a distinct rulebook. By using the right toolkit -- still analytically rigorous, but distinct from the timeworn approaches -- business leaders can vastly improve the odds of success with critical growth ventures.
Stephen Wunker is the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and the author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't (McGraw-Hill, 2011)
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Thu, Nov 17, 2011 @ 12:40 PM
Industries that might appear vastly different on the surface can show powerful parallels on close examination. Business model innovation in genetic testing and electric cars shows how new kinds of intermediaries often arise in new markets. As they build strong strategic positions for themselves, these intermediaries can also turbo-charge the growth of markets by removing several common barriers to adopting bold innovations. Read about their lessons in my piece for Forbes.
Click for more of New Markets' thinking about business model innovation.
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Wed, Nov 16, 2011 @ 02:36 PM
The leading business book summary publisher Soundview has released an eight-page summary of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't. The summary covers topics including:
- Why new markets matter
- Finding new markets
- Assessing what doesn't exist
- Targeting the first customers
- Paths to market penetration
- Entering at the right time
- Fulfilling the potential of emerging markets
- Building corporate capabilities to tackle new markets
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Tue, Nov 08, 2011 @ 10:47 AM
Italy's Piaggio is a 127-year-old firm with a proud heritage and iconic global brands such as the Vespa scooter. Companies with such deep roots often have trouble adjusting to an emerging market, yet Piaggio has succeeded through creating a new market segment and targeting mid-sized countries. I interviewed Costantino Sambuy, the head of Piaggio's efforts, about what approaches worked. Read more in my piece for Forbes.
Stephen Wunker is the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't.
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Fri, Nov 04, 2011 @ 11:24 AM
Much of today's huge management consulting industry is based on analysis of facts. Huge decks of prettily-presented data justify difficult business decisions and help to bring fractious executives to consensus. Given that so many companies face turbulent strategic environments today, the reliance on facts is ironic. Peter Drucker, arguably the greatest management scholar of the last century, had a deep distrust of facts in these situations. His advice: first seek out opinions and dissent. Read more in my piece for Harvard Business Review.
Stephen Wunker is the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and the author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't.
Posted by Stephen Wunker on Mon, Oct 31, 2011 @ 05:00 AM
Herman Cain's politics may be controversial, but his ascent from unknown to front-runner is a feat that upstarts of all stripes would love to emulate. Cain has followed a classic strategy for attacking better-known and better-financed rivals. His approach holds lessons for aspiring businesses, and the distinctions between early-stage markets and early-stage voting provide important take-aways too. Read about them in my piece for Forbes.
Stephen Wunker is the Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and the Author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't.