Linkedin & Twitter

Thursday, October 27, 2016

4 Rules for Disrupting yourself before Competitors do
from article "The Best Companies Aren’t Afraid to Replace Their Most Profitable Products"
by Howard Yu and Thomas Malnight


For a long time, the Silicon Valley funding model has been hailed as a powerful alternative to the stifling way corporate America works. Many are betting on the new generation of technology firms to unsettle the old guard. Today the number of unicorns—startups that valued at $1 billion or greater—is staggering. Fortune counted more than 170 of the mythical creatures, with an average of one unicorn born every week during 2015. Back in 2009, there were just four companies that fit the bill.

Despite this surge, the reality is that disruption doesn’t always happen as quickly as people assume. More than 40% of the unicorns that went public since 2011 saw their valuation stay flat or dropped. Some observers have comparedthe situation to the dot-com bubble of the late ‘90s.

Meanwhile, tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have continued to grow impressively, especially considering their large size. What is the secret that allows these incumbents to fend off the startups aiming to displace them?

The answer is deceptively simple: embracing self-cannibalization. Self-cannibalization occurs when a company chooses to proactively replace one product or process with another that is potentially worth less. Forward-looking incumbents recognize the need to cannibalize their own products, rather than leaving it to other startups, who are more than happy to take on the challenge.

Embracing this approach isn’t easy – it doesn’t always seem natural to talk about how to replace profitable businesses. But there are four rules which can help managers of all walks of an organization instill the principle in their day-to-day work, in order to make self-cannibalization successful in the long run.

Rule #1: Get into the habit of setting up new business units that compete with the old

Consider China’s Tencent. Founded in November 1998, the company has since grown into China’s largest and most-used Internet service portal, and in the process, has also become the world’s largest gaming company.

Back when desktop computers still reigned supreme, Tencent dominated online instant messaging with its QQ service (similar to ICQ). With the rise of the smartphone and mobile technology, QQ failed to capture new users. Top management swiftly established a new team in Guangdong, away from the Shenzhen headquarters, and tasked a small group of engineers to reimagine a different social media platform, giving them carte blanche to cannibalize the existing QQ product. That was the beginning of WeChat.

Since then, WeChat has been constantly launching new services, from mobile payments to booking doctor appointments, from police reporting to taxi hailing, from video conferencing to mobile banking services. WeChat now has more than 690 million active users and is still growing. In August, WeChat started rolling out an impressive international series of new games—another move aimed at disrupting Tencent’s core business.

The willingness to cannibalize a company’s existing business before its decline was also a major focus of Apple under Steve Jobs. In 2005, when the demand for the iPod Mini remained huge, the Nano was launched, effectively destroying the revenue stream of an existing product. And while iPod sales were still going through the roof, Jobs launched the iPhone which combined iPod, cell phone, and Internet access into a single device. Three years after the iPhone’s launch, the iPad made its debut despite the risk that it might one day cut into Mac desktop computer sales. So resolute was Apple’s determination in trading a highly profitable business for an unknown future that Jobs reportedly said, “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”

Rule #2: Find a balance between derivative products, platform upgrades, and breakthrough innovation

Self-cannibalization occurs at different levels. It can mean both replacing existing products and platforms with incrementally better ones and replacing them with something completely different. Most companies find the latter more challenging, but the best companies pursue both.

Recruit Holdings from Japan is a publishing and classified advertisement company, founded in 1963. Its classified advertising has evolved into numerous publications in which merchants, ranging from gourmet restaurants, beauty salons, and wedding banquet venues advertise, and Recruit editorial teams provide magazine content. (Similar to Cosmo, Glamour, and GQ.) Since the early 2000s, many of the company’s publications have gone digital.

Instead of merely digitizing magazine content, managers built a number of web-based platforms. Operating managers were empowered to develop unique business models and launch derivative products by themselves to best serve each unique segment; and in the process, disrupted and competed with one another.

At the corporate level, however, it became all too apparent that without a commonly shared platform upgrade, the collection of individual businesses would have limited potential. Senior management at Recruit began to push for a unified backbone platform, a platform upgrade that would better serve customers’ needs. Doing so did require getting rid of many overlapping offerings, cut-short a few cash-cow businesses, but the end result was a more cohesive overall product portfolio.

Although launching derivative products and upgrading platforms are both important, Recruit didn’t let them serve as substitutes for more ambitious innovation. Lately, the company realized the importance of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), and proceeded to set up a mini AI lab, dedicated to breakthrough innovation. In 2015, Alon Halevy, a former Google research scientist, joined the company to help guide this effort. Top management saw AI as having the potential of redefining Recruit’s corporate mission—the ultimate expression of self-cannibalization.

Rule #3: Create a bypass mechanism to pitch ideas to the top

One challenge for companies looking to self-cannibalize is the fact that game-changing ideas can easily be filtered out as business proposals move up the corporate ladder. To counter-balance this tendency, Recruit hosts several idea pitch days when operating managers can showcase unconventional proposals to senior executives directly, bypassing the management hierarchy entirely.

A persistent manager at Recruit had repeatedly lobbied for an online education business, which his supervisors couldn’t reconcile with the existing business model. But when shown to the board members at one pitch night, the business case was so compelling that it resulted in seed money and the establishment of an independent unit. The new unit has since focused on online “cram school” delivery, providing less affluent students a way to compete for university admission.

Rule #4: Create a corporate goal with a percent of revenue earmarked to new products

Edward Deming, the father of quality movement in the 1950s, believed that what can’t be measured doesn’t get managed. The same holds true for growth. 3M is famous for employing the thirty percent rule, with 30% of each division’s revenue coming from products introduced in the last four years. At companies like Tencent and Recruit, similar metrics are tracked rigorously and employee bonuses are based on the successful achievement of this goal.

Adding such a metric makes it easier to follow Rule 1, since a culture that encourages new products will be more likely to consider cannibalizing its own successes. But even with such a metric, the balance between derivative products and breakthrough innovation remains important.

The fundamental advantage of large companies is in their ability to integrate and reconfigure offerings and services based on their prior capabilities. Startups may move fast, but they lack experience. Big companies, by contrast, possess a wealth of knowledge and know-how. What they lack is the bandwidth to commercialize the next growth engine when time is still on their side. But the two don’t need to be exclusive. By embracing self-cannibalization as a principle and following these few simple rules, an incumbent can fend off the unicorns at its gates.

Source: Harvard Business Review

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, Contenidos de nuestros 
TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY, "A MEDIDA" 
de las necesidades de su Organización:


Consultas al mail: mamc.latam@gmail.com
ó al TE: +5411.3532.0510


.·. Miguel Ángel MEDINA CASABELLA, MSM, MBA, SMHS .·.
Especialista en Management Estratégico, Gestión del Cambio e Inversiones
Representante de The George Washington University en Foros y Ferias de LatAm desde 2001
Representante de The George Washington University Medical Center para los Países de LatAm desde 1996
Ex Director Académico y Profesor de Gestión del Cambio del HSML Program para LatAm en GWU School of Medicine & Health Sciences (Washington DC)
CEO, MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm
TE Oficina: ( 0054) 11 - 3532 - 0510
TE Móvil (Local): ( 011 ) 15 - 4420 - 5103
TE Móvil (Int´l): ( 0054) 911 - 4420 - 5103
Skype: medinacasabella


MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm ©
(mamc.latam@gmail.com; +5411-3532-0510)
es una Consultora Interdisciplinaria cuya Misión es proveer
soluciones integrales, eficientes y operativas en todas las áreas vinculadas a:

Estrategias Multiculturales y Transculturales, Organizacionales y Competitivas,
Management Estratégico,
Gestión del Cambio,
Marketing Estratégico,
Inversiones,
Gestión Educativa,
Capacitación

de Latino América (LatAm), para los Sectores:

a) Salud, Farma y Biotech,
b) Industria y Servicios,
c) Universidades y Centros de Capacitación,
d) Gobierno y ONGs.
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

5 Practical Lessons from Innovation Leaders to Apply
by Jason Green and Taddy Hall
Over the next five years, the consumer packaged goods (CPG) business sector will likely have more category, product and brand performance fluctuation than we’ve seen over the last 20.

Consider that today, as Cambridge Group Partner Eddie Yoon has discussed, that a mere 1% of CPG brands capture upwards of 80% of category growth, according to Eddie Yoon, partner of Cambridge Group. That is a staggering statistic, and one that is likely to face more pressure in the years ahead.

Few would argue the reality of this unprecedented change, and fewer still would argue that the latitude for missteps has never been narrower. What then do we need to do to navigate in such an environment? We need breakthrough leadership, plain and simple.

In the most recent Nielsen Breakthrough Innovation study, executives at The Cambridge Group and Nielsen scoured more than 3,500 consumer products that were introduced to the U.S. market in 2014 to identify and honor the brands that broke through the crowd and demonstrated success unprecedented among a chaotic marketing environment. The 18 winning brands (and their fearless leaders) were able to achieve greatness against metrics that require distinctiveness, relevance and endurance in a congested CPG marketplace, delivering products that seamlessly address consumers’ day-to-day challenges.

Given the pressing importance and impact of breakthrough leadership in realizing these successes, the team chose to make that the focus of the study this year. From their experiences and perseverance, we are able to glean 5 practical lessons that executives can quickly deploy for the benefit of their own business today.

1. Be present. Leaders who expect breakthrough innovation and growth need to show up and roll up their sleeves. Sustained, profitable growth depends on it. As Barry Calpino, VP, Innovation Hothouse at Mondelēz International recounts, “I think a lot of people in our industry are accustomed to hearing senior executives extol the importance of game-changing innovation. We publicly acknowledged our status as ‘worst’ and simultaneously committed ourselves to becoming first. President Tony Vernon didn’t just proclaim and delegate; he showed up, literally.” It’s not a shocking revelation, but in an environment where leaders are being pulled in countless directions at once, being a visible and vocal anchor to the importance of breakthrough innovation will be a game changer.

2. Become the voice. Calpino continues, “By being there, being engaged and constantly playing the role of the instigator to think bigger and make ideas sharper, Tony sent a powerful signal to the organization that innovation mattered, that big bets were important, that boldness was rewarded and championed.” The same truths have been echoed at AB InBev, Big Heart Pet Brands and more, that unless incentives are aligned, and executives clearly support innovation ‘explorers’, then those explorers will be a rare breed. Blockbusters need senior support, and oftentimes the initiatives that have the potential to become blockbusters run counter to every entrenched organizational norm and short-term economic incentive. This often leads to a lack of clear executive support, leaving these would-be blockbusters to waste away. Become the voice of ‘yes.’ If managers anticipate a senior champion, they will be motivated to strive (and attain) greatness.

3. Be intentional—learn voraciously. Even in the best of environments, not all innovations will be unbridled successes. What happens too frequently, however, is that while the successes are analyzed to uncover opportunities to repeat success, no one looks at the failures, and what could be learned from them. Learning lessons from as many places as possible brings continuous improvement, and successful innovators study their own launches (successful and otherwise), competitive launches and benchmark outside the core category to apply the lessons learned.

At SC Johnson, Calpino spearheaded a project in which marketing, R&D managers and senior execs were divided into three cross-functional teams to analyze decision making, resource allocation, team composition, insight generation and other key variables related to three discrete sample sets. What they found was that “Every success…had an active senior-executive champion. There were no exceptions to this find across all three of the study sets”…(internal launches, competitive launches, and benchmarks outside the category).

4. Be creative: Defy category constraints and conventions. Category Creators are companies that bring to market breakthrough products, breakthrough business model innovations, or both, which fundamentally ‘create’ new categories and break open the gates to new growth opportunities. Big ideas such as these cross disciplines and bring together seemingly disparate fields and areas of focus. If senior leaders expect their organizations to seek, develop and commercialize deeply creative ideas that challenge the status quo, then these same senior leaders need to be at the forefront of pushing boundaries, bringing outside perspectives into the company, challenging assumptions and cultivating a playfulness that fuels imagination.

5. Be vigilant. A word of caution from Calpino as we leave you with the last lesson: “Throughout my career and during my time at Kraft, I’ve seen the engagement and commitment of senior leadership ebb and flow—even the best ones. There are so many other ‘more urgent’ and burning issues, and therein lays a huge challenge. It is always, always hard work requiring senior engagement and commitment. The truth is, I’ve learned that you have to be relentlessly vigilant, or hard-earned capabilities will quickly atrophy, and bad habits reassert themselves.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, but cannot underscore enough the importance of what Calpino recounts.

For those of us in consumer products, there is a challenge ahead, no doubt. But begin with these 5 key lessons, or, reminders, from breakthrough leaders to create a culture that embraces innovation and they will separate you from the rest of the pack and keep you out in front.
Source: Chief Executive

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, Contenidos de nuestros 
TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY, "A MEDIDA" 
de las necesidades de su Organización:


Consultas al mail: mamc.latam@gmail.com
ó al TE: +5411.3532.0510


.·. Miguel Ángel MEDINA CASABELLA, MSM, MBA, SMHS .·.
Especialista en Management Estratégico, Gestión del Cambio e Inversiones
Representante de The George Washington University en Foros y Ferias de LatAm desde 2001
Representante de The George Washington University Medical Center para los Países de LatAm desde 1996
Ex Director Académico y Profesor de Gestión del Cambio del HSML Program para LatAm en GWU School of Medicine & Health Sciences (Washington DC)
CEO, MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm
TE Oficina: ( 0054) 11 - 3532 - 0510
TE Móvil (Local): ( 011 ) 15 - 4420 - 5103
TE Móvil (Int´l): ( 0054) 911 - 4420 - 5103
Skype: medinacasabella


MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm ©
(mamc.latam@gmail.com; +5411-3532-0510)
es una Consultora Interdisciplinaria cuya Misión es proveer
soluciones integrales, eficientes y operativas en todas las áreas vinculadas a:

Estrategias Multiculturales y Transculturales, Organizacionales y Competitivas,
Management Estratégico,
Gestión del Cambio,
Marketing Estratégico,
Inversiones,
Gestión Educativa,
Capacitación

de Latino América (LatAm), para los Sectores:

a) Salud, Farma y Biotech,
b) Industria y Servicios,
c) Universidades y Centros de Capacitación,
d) Gobierno y ONGs.
Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, October 20, 2016

4 Lessons for New CEOs on Choosing a Leadership Team
by Dale Buss
One of the most important things a new business leader does is assemble his or her leadership team. But new CEOs and chairmen typically will only go as far as their hand-picked team will take them. How does one decide whom to choose? 

Like many CEOs and chairmen, Tim Ryan has been working on building his leadership team. The PwC Vice Chairman and US Markets, Strategy and Stakeholders Leader has been named U.S. chairman for the company. These 4 principles, which he relied on to put together his new leadership team, would also provide good guidelines for new CEOs.

1. Enshrining diversity. As he talked with partners, staff and clients for this exercise, Ryan kept hearing that “people wanted this team to lead not just from the top, but to lead with them to serve our clients, our people, and our communities.” So he emphasized including “a diversity of minds” on his new team who would talk “with people rather than … at them. With an inclusive approach, the sum is far larger than it parts.

And he meant various kinds of diversity. Thus of the 20 members that Ryan handpicked for PwC’s new leadership team, 35% are women, 40% are minority members, 25% “bring an international perspective” or were born outside the United States, and one is an LGBT representative. Plus, three of the 20 “didn’t grow up at PwC” and so “bring a very different perspective on the world,” and two of them are young enough to “have more than 20 years to go until they hit retirement age.”

2. Focusing on skill sets. One way for a new CEO to put together a team is to “put names in roles,” Ryan said. But his approach is to “figure out what are the skill sets that are necessary to achieve our mission and our objectives. These skill sets are what should drive selection of a leadership team.” For instance, Ryan said, “If your objective is to transform the organization from a technology perspective, which many companies are doing, this may lead you away from a number of people who don’t have digital skill sets as a leader.”

In fact, Ryan said, one large-bank client recently took such an approach in changing its mind about a top executive who’d been the internal heir apparent for the CEO job for about a year. “Given where the industry is going and how fast the business model is changing,” Ryan explained, “they came to the realization that he may not be the best person. They stopped thinking about the individual and started thinking about skill sets.”

3. Owning your decisions. Ryan said that a new chief must, in the end, make his or her own decisions—and “own” those decisions—about who is on the new leadership team. “It’s important to get input from a number of stakeholders, including your board and your people and partners, and outside stakeholders,” Ryan said. “But at the end of the day, you’ve got to make the choices. Leading an organization is challenging, and you want a team around you who can help you accomplish what you want. You have to make the calls so that you’re comfortable.”

4. Valuing listening. It’s even more important in the top job than elsewhere on the ladder, and Ryan believes that “listening versus talking over people will help a leader become more successful.” Successful chiefs, he said, understand that “if they’re listening, about 80% of the answer is there, and his job is to assemble those data points and get the remaining 20% so you can go forward. And your people and clients are closest to where the action is” to enlighten that way forward. But listening well “is a skill that most people don’t develop overnight. If you value that skill, you do it through observation and history.”

New business leaders like Ryan have long roads ahead as they begin their tenures. But if they can start out with sound principles like these, their odds of success are much better.

Source: Chief Executive

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, Contenidos de nuestros 
TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY, "A MEDIDA" 
de las necesidades de su Organización:


Consultas al mail: mamc.latam@gmail.com
ó al TE: +5411.3532.0510


.·. Miguel Ángel MEDINA CASABELLA, MSM, MBA, SMHS .·.
Especialista en Management Estratégico, Gestión del Cambio e Inversiones
Representante de The George Washington University en Foros y Ferias de LatAm desde 2001
Representante de The George Washington University Medical Center para los Países de LatAm desde 1996
Ex Director Académico y Profesor de Gestión del Cambio del HSML Program para LatAm en GWU School of Medicine & Health Sciences (Washington DC)
CEO, MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm
TE Oficina: ( 0054) 11 - 3532 - 0510
TE Móvil (Local): ( 011 ) 15 - 4420 - 5103
TE Móvil (Int´l): ( 0054) 911 - 4420 - 5103
Skype: medinacasabella


MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm ©
(mamc.latam@gmail.com; +5411-3532-0510)
es una Consultora Interdisciplinaria cuya Misión es proveer
soluciones integrales, eficientes y operativas en todas las áreas vinculadas a:

Estrategias Multiculturales y Transculturales, Organizacionales y Competitivas,
Management Estratégico,
Gestión del Cambio,
Marketing Estratégico,
Inversiones,
Gestión Educativa,
Capacitación

de Latino América (LatAm), para los Sectores:

a) Salud, Farma y Biotech,
b) Industria y Servicios,
c) Universidades y Centros de Capacitación,
d) Gobierno y ONGs.
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Balancing Consumer Desires with Business Logic
by Christine Robins
It’s a known fact that to succeed in business, you must be able to carefully walk the tightrope between your consumer desires and what makes sense from a business perspective. But taking on this challenge is no easy feat.

In fact, one could even consider it to be a potential catalyst for why about half of all new businesses fail after the first five years. To reach your end-goal of balancing consumer desires with business logic requires practice and patience, but most importantly, a strategic focus on 3 critical areas: product strategy, marketing and brand experience.

1. Product strategy. Rather than developing new products just because you can, brands should first look to see if there is a real “need gap” in their market and what the benefit of filling that gap would be for consumers and the business. This can be done by utilizing a tollgate process, where risks and benefits are weighed at finite “gates” in the product development process.

By opening or closing these gates, innovators will gain a better understanding of investment timing, technical difficulty and costs to determine if an idea is not only possible, but a sound business decision. The information we have gathered at Char-Broil has helped us develop a plan for the short-term and also create long-term roadmaps for product development. Having a quantifiable blueprint of your path to success will help drive momentum forward, while giving your employees and retail partners a brand vision and innovation trajectory they can buy into.

2. Marketing. When looking to amplify marketing efforts around a specific product line or launch, it is necessary to drive awareness and purchase intent through promotions, merchandising and, specifically, advertising. With advertising, the consumer is king once again. Analyzing their responsiveness to ads, as well as where and when they make the conversion to purchase, will help to pinpoint where your dollars will be best spent. For example, you may have historically focused on print ads, but after measuring ad effectiveness and efficiency, you may find that your consumer is now getting most of their news through digital channels. We found a similar result at Char-Broil and have since adjusted our strategy to “heavy up” on digital marketing and measurement, thus reaching and engaging with more consumers than ever before.

3. Brand experience. While product specs may be important to an engineer or tech enthusiast, the average consumer is driven by the relatability and emotional impact a product elicits. To ensure that you are effectively “pulling at their heart strings,” create a story line for your product and develop impactful messaging that supports it. This can be as simple as making your social media content more interactive, or increasing in-store merchandising to entice and educate consumers when busy salespeople are not available to provide immediate assistance. But most importantly, establishing your brand’s website as a valuable resource for support, information and advice, instead of simply a place to purchase, will improve the brand experience and, in return, help drive repeat purchases and referrals.

Today, the integration between quantifiable data and strategic thinking around growth goals, product innovation, marketing and brand experience is making it easier for organizations to strike a balance between consumer desires and business logic. Whether you’re starting out small or looking to continue an upward momentum, your company will be positioned to thrive once you’re able to break away from old-school tactics to leverage this new way of corporate thinking.
Source: Chief Executive

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, Contenidos de nuestros 
TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY, "A MEDIDA" 
de las necesidades de su Organización:


Consultas al mail: mamc.latam@gmail.com
ó al TE: +5411.3532.0510


.·. Miguel Ángel MEDINA CASABELLA, MSM, MBA, SMHS .·.
Especialista en Management Estratégico, Gestión del Cambio e Inversiones
Representante de The George Washington University en Foros y Ferias de LatAm desde 2001
Representante de The George Washington University Medical Center para los Países de LatAm desde 1996
Ex Director Académico y Profesor de Gestión del Cambio del HSML Program para LatAm en GWU School of Medicine & Health Sciences (Washington DC)
CEO, MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm
TE Oficina: ( 0054) 11 - 3532 - 0510
TE Móvil (Local): ( 011 ) 15 - 4420 - 5103
TE Móvil (Int´l): ( 0054) 911 - 4420 - 5103
Skype: medinacasabella


MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm ©
(mamc.latam@gmail.com; +5411-3532-0510)
es una Consultora Interdisciplinaria cuya Misión es proveer
soluciones integrales, eficientes y operativas en todas las áreas vinculadas a:

Estrategias Multiculturales y Transculturales, Organizacionales y Competitivas,
Management Estratégico,
Gestión del Cambio,
Marketing Estratégico,
Inversiones,
Gestión Educativa,
Capacitación

de Latino América (LatAm), para los Sectores:

a) Salud, Farma y Biotech,
b) Industria y Servicios,
c) Universidades y Centros de Capacitación,
d) Gobierno y ONGs.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)