Sustainable Growth Strategies      

Two Components of Sustainable Growth Strategy

Sustainable business growth strategy is a practical approach to achieving top-line growth and bottom-line results.

Building Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Sustainable competitive advantage is the prolonged benefit of implementing some unique value-creating strategy based on unique combination of internal organizational resources and capabilities that cannot be replicated by competitors... More

Organizational Capability Approach

"An organizational capability approach nurtures three of the most critical factors essential to achieve superior, sustainable results:

1. strategic focus,

2. organizational alignment, and

3. operating discipline.

Conversely, taking action to achieve strategic focus, organizational alignment, and operating discipline develops capability thinking."¹³

The Tao of Business Success

The Tao helps you achieve much more with much less effort. It gives you advice that imparts perspective and balance. It applies equally well to the managing of a large corporation or the running of a small business, to the governing of a nation or the leading a small team, to your personal development or to the coaching of others... More

Balance Your Business System

The primary goal of any business is to increase stakeholder value. It is achieved through a dynamic balancing of competing values. In order for a business to maximize economic value, it must balance customer satisfaction and competitive market forces with internal cost and growth consideration... More

Balanced Organization: 5 Basic Elements

Leadership (Fire):

• Corporate vision inspires and energizes all employees... More

Creating a Culture for Innovation

By: Soren Kaplan

Shaping culture, especially when it comes to creating a culture of innovation, is a daily task that involves elevating the mundane to the strategic.

By managing the strategic levers of culture, and by practicing the strategies of envisioning, communicating and sponsoring, it becomes possible to create a culture of innovation and drive long-term strategic advantage... More

Institutional Excellence

The leaders of great companies are not just great at growing profits. Most importantly, they are organizational architects determined to establish institutional excellence for as long as the company is in business. "When institutional excellence is in place, companies can achieve industry leadership for decades and generations"⁵... More

Market Leadership Strategies

The market leader is dominant in its industry and has substantial market share. If you want to lead the market, you must be the industry leader in developing new business models and new products or services. You must be on the cutting edge of new technologies and innovative business processes. Your customer value proposition must offer a superior solution to a customers' problem, and your product must be well differentiated... More

Venture Strategies

The most successful companies are those that have developed aggressive venture strategies and have made ventures critical components of their strategic and operating success. For today's corporations, traditional internal expansions, efficiency improvements and "synergistic" acquisitions are no longer sufficient sources of growth in most industry segments that had grown crowded and hypercompetitive. The new challenge is to search for emerging "white space" opportunities, "new-business creations that would meet the unmet, unserved needs of customers in emerging markets."¹... More

Market Focus

Do more with less – "focus on something that is not just different from the rest, but something you can continue to deliver better than anyone else. And continue delivering it! Don't get sidetracked into growth by category extensions and businesses you don't belong in."⁸... More

The Growing Role of the Business Architect

In today's knowledge- and innovation-driven complex economy, business architects are in growing demand.  They are cross-functionally excellent people who can tie several silos of business development expertise together, create synergies, design winning business model and a balanced business system and then lead people who will put their plans into action... More

Resource-Based Model

The currently dominant view of business strategy – resource-based theory – is based on the concept of economic rent and the view of the company as a collection of capabilities. This view of strategy has a coherence and integrative role that places it well ahead of other mechanisms of strategic decision making.¹²

The resource based view of strategy emphasizes economic rent creation through distinctive capabilities. Economic rent, or Economic Value Added (EVA), is what companies earn over and above the cost  of the capital employed in their business. It is the measure of the competitive advantage, and competitive advantage is the only means by which companies in competitive markets can earn economic rent. The objective of a company is to increase its economic rent, rather than its profit as such. "A company which increases its profits but not its economic rent - as through investments or acquisitions which yield less than the cost of capital - destroys value".⁴ The perspective of economic rent forces the question 'why can't competitors do that?' into discussion.

Enterprise-wide Business Process Management (EBPM)

EBPM is "a deliberate and collaborative approach to systematically - and systemically - managing all of a company's business processes."¹ A process-managed enterprise supports, empowers and energizes employees, encourages their initiative, enables and allows its people to perform process work... More

Strategic Innovation

Strategic Innovation is the creation of growth strategies, new product categories, services or business models that change the game and generate significant new value for customers and the corporation... More

Entrepreneurial Approach

Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs. Doing new things, or doing old things in new ways is how entrepreneurs exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leaders see change as the norm and as healthy; they always search for change, respond to it, and exploit it as an opportunity.... More

Sustainable Business Models

In the new era of unrelenting change and competition, your face a daunting challenge: how to sustain the business model of your firm. "The fact is, no matter how bulletproof your firm's current business model, it will be challenged by new business models."⁴ The new reality is that business models have shorter shelf life. You must constantly attempt to discover new business models if you hope to survive and grow... More

Differentiation Strategy

Hypercompetition is a key feature of a new economy. With the enormous competition markets today are driven by choice: your targeted customers have too many choices, all of which can be fulfilled instantly. Choosing among multiple options is always based on differences, implicit or explicit, so you ought to differentiate in order to give the customer a reason to chose your product or service. Thus, "differentiation is one of the most important strategic and tactical activities in which companies must constantly engage. It is not discretionary."⁹... More

Innovation

Innovation is the key driver of competitive advantage, growth, and profitability. There are many parts of the whole field of innovation: strategy innovation, new product development, creative approaches to problem solving, idea management, suggestion systems, etc. All of these components are important. "Yet approaching them piecemeal will bring piecemeal results... These seemingly disparate issues must be integrated into a single overarching strategy if they are to be mobilized in the quest for growth."⁵ In this new era of systemic innovation, you must design your firm's innovation process holistically... More

Managing Innovation versus Managing Operations

Innovation is a learning process, the product of which is new applied knowledge. Operations is an established process driven by existing knowledge. Operations generate today's value, while innovation creates tomorrow's opportunities. The primary difference between operations and innovation is uncertainty. It eludes planning, prediction and containment... More

Sustainable Innovation System

The Innovation System model synthesizes and defines the core elements of innovation, their behavior and interaction. The power of this good model makes it easier to understand complex issues and dynamics of innovation, separate its elements and examine them is greater depth. It establishes a framework that helps you to demystify the innovation process and its driving forces, to reveal the unique innovation practices of market champions and understand what makes them so successful and unique... More

Service-Profit Chain

The service-profit chain is a powerful phenomenon that stresses the importance of people - both employees and customers – and how linking them can leverage corporate performance. Creating a work environment that encourages rapid response to customers' needs and attentive follow-through is the key to leveraging the power of the service-profit chain. This is only possible when people are empowered to make decisions and are motivated to solve problems.

By encouraging employees to go beyond the literal boundaries of their jobs – to make suggestions for improvement – you gain not just a part, but the full potential of their contributions to the business... More

Eco-Effectiveness

Environmental issues and eco-effectiveness are increasingly reflected in business decisions. No business that strives to remain competitive, open to new markets and new opportunities can afford to ignore the global demands for environmental quality. Concepts and tools such as cleaner production, life-cycle assessment (LCA), design for environment (DfE) and extended producer responsibility (EPR) are rapidly becoming key tools for forward-thinking corporations... More

Moving with Speed

In the new economy where everything is moving faster and it's only going to get faster, the new mantra is, "Do it more with less and do it faster".⁶... More

Business BLISS

What every successful business needs is Business BLISS:

Balance, Leadership, Innovation, Synergy, and Speed... More

Growing Is Less Risky than Not Growing...

The Do-or-die Struggle for Growth...

Growing In the Knowledge Economy...

Eight Best Practices of Successful Companies...

Working On Your Business...

Opportunity-driven Business Development...

Results-based Leadership...

Creating Customer Value...

Value Innovation...

Customer Partnership...

Ten Commandments for Building a Growing Company...

Developing Sustainable Growth Strategy From the Outside In...

Achieving Top-Line Growth...

Inclusive Approach...

Employee Empowerment...

Relentless Growth Attitude...

Improving Business Performance: Virtuous Circles...

Developing Sustainable Growth Strategy From the Outside In...

Live the Qualities of Sustainable Growth Business...

Relentless Growth Attitude...

Five Guiding Principles for Spreading the Relentless Growth Attitude...

Growing Is a Creative Game...

Bunsha - a Japanese Concept for Successful Business Growth...

Harnessing the Power of Change...

Harnessing Your People Power...

Strategies for Building a Growth Culture...

Principles for Driving Growth Through Innovation...

Sustainable Innovation System...

Using the Innovation Portfolio...

FutureStep - a New Strategic Management Process...

Creating Change...

The Tao of Business Success...

25 Lessons from Jack Welch...