Disruptive innovation in practice
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Read more in Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't (McGraw-Hill, 2011)
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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)
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 and healthcare.
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:
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.
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.