R.G. McGrath, I.C. MacMillan
Market Busters
40 Strategic Moves that Drive Exceptional Business Growth
Harvard Business School Press, 2005
40 Beispiele zur Identifikation neuer Wachstumsmöglichkeiten: ein wertvolles
Reservoir von Analogien zur Inspiration für den eigenen Strategieprozess.
strategy+business, die von Booz Allen Hamilton heraus gegebene US-Zeitschrift,
hat 2005 eine Liste der Best Business Books herausgegeben und dort das Buch
sehr treffend rezensiert. Ich zitiere:
Strategy by Analogy
MarketBusters takes a less analytical approach to the development
of breakthroughs, using analogies with companies successful in other industries
or geographies.
Although using a tool based on analysis may seem superior to reliance on
analogies, managers may find the analogies more helpful. Indeed, successful
companies
often develop value innovations through analogy. Think of Starbucks’s
Howard Schultz emulating the Italian coffee shop, or Sam Walton borrowing
the Sam’s Club concept from Price Club and the Supercenter concept
from Carrefour’s
hypermarkets. Moreover, recent research in cognitive psychology suggests
that analogies are the most efficacious way to create complex innovations
(like
business models).
The authors of MarketBusters have their own equivalent
to Blue
Ocean Strategy’s “value
innovation.” They call it a “marketbusting move,” defined
as “an action taken by your firm to deliver markedly superior performance.” Although
the authors don’t tell the reader how to make a market-busting
move, they catalog 40 such moves, sorted into five categories. Companies
can
use these categories to stimulate their thinking:
1. Transform
the customers’ experience
by eliminating or improving steps in the “consumption chain” — from
the time a potential customer first becomes aware of a need, through
purchase and use, to final
disposal.
2. Transform your offerings, either by enhancing the attributes that
customers most value or by reducing or eliminating attributes that
customers don’t
like.
3. Redefine profit drivers, the metrics your company uses to measure
performance at the business unit level.
4. Exploit industry shifts such as business cycles or restructuring
of the value chain.
5. Enter new markets (new to you) to take advantage of emerging opportunities
by monitoring “tectonic triggers,” like new technologies
that change what is technically feasible or affordable, changes in
social norms
or attitudes,
institutional and regulatory changes, and demographic shifts.
Our favorite category is No. 3, and it is a good illustration
of the authors’ approach.
By “profit drivers” or “key metrics,” they
mean the way a business keeps track of what it sells and how it
makes money. These metrics
represent some of the most fundamental yet unexamined elements
of any business. Eight of the 40 market-busting moves involve changing
key metrics. One move
is to radically change what the company sells. Broadcasters, for
example, shifted their model from offering free television to consumers
by selling advertising,
to a new model in which consumers paid through subscriptions. Another
market-busting move is to radically improve productivity, as National
Credit Systems, a collection
agency, did when it reduced its fees from the industry standard
of 40 percent of collections to only 8 percent, by improving the
effectiveness of letter
writing — the lowest-cost and most effective way to collect
debt. A third move is to improve cash flow velocity, ideally to
achieve negative
working
capital (payables greater than receivables plus inventory) as Dell
Inc. does. The fourth metric-oriented move is to reduce asset intensity,
by
relying on
contract manufacturers or information technology outsourcers.
The
other four market-busting moves in this category involve redefining
the key metrics of the company’s customers to enhance their
profitability or address their pain points. Monsanto developed
seeds that improve yield and
reduce the use of expensive and environmentally dangerous chemicals.
General Electric’s businesses send Six Sigma teams to help
customers address their problems. UPS recently branched out from
its core business of package
delivery into other businesses that improve customers’ cash
flow, like repairing Toshiba laptops for Toshiba - eliminating
steps in the process, integrating repair and shipping activity,
and reducing
the time
taken to repair
a broken PC. |
