Reviews for Five Future Strategies You Need to Know Right Now

The average rating for Five Future Strategies You Need to Know Right Now based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-07-25 00:00:00 Dante Muoz Five Future Strategies You Need Right Now George Stalk Harvard Business Press This is one of the titles in the "Memo to the CEO" series published by Harvard Business Press, each less than 200 pages in length and superbly produced. In fact, none is a "memo" or written solely for a CEO. In this volume, George Stalk explains how to become alert to "faint signals" of what could prove to be early indicators of possible opportunities to gain competitive advantages. Once those opportunities have been verified (Stalk suggests how to do that), appropriate strategies to exploit them will be needed. He focuses on five examples of strategies whose "sources of advantage are not only abundantly clear, but undeniable": supply-chain gymnastics (i.e. adroitly managing a global supply chain), sidestepping economics of scale (i.e. a "disposability" business model), embracing complexity (i.e. four ways to attract customers who are looking for a higher level of complexity), and infinite bandwidth (i.e. effortless receipt of any amount of information whenever and wherever desired and at no cost). Stalk offers "a high-level introduction to each of these emerging issues, along with suggestions for how to turn them into competitive advantage." He devotes a separate chapter to each of the five categories, then in the final chapter shifts his attention to examples of potential strategies that are "no more than faint signals today," identifies two emerging strategies on his "Watch List" awaiting further evidence of their potential to create competitive advantage, and then briefly discusses various "hallucinations" for which there are currently no corporate examples but are "worth pondering" nonetheless. But Stalk doesn't limit the narrative to what he has observed and tracked. He reassures his reader that other faint signals "are likely to be found in the world around you," in the reader's own competitive environment as well as beyond it to other industries and competitors to spot insights of others "who may have found a new way of operating and competing that can be transplanted into [her or his] industry to the great confusion of others...and then `plagiarize' the idea." Or when coming across an anomaly, to "understand its implications and use the insight to drive the business to new levels of performance." Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything Hal Sirkin, Jim Hemerling, and Arindam Bhattacharya Business Plus With regard to the title, Sirkin, Hemerling, and Bhattacharya explain that "globality [is] the name for a new and different reality in which we'll all be competing with everyone, from everywhere, for everything." In a global business environment that Thomas Friedman characterizes as having become "flat," it is also possible (albeit theoretically) for companies to forge a strategic alliance with anyone, anywhere. They go on to suggest that as a new era emerges, "we call it globality, a different kind of environment, in which business flows in every direction. Companies have no centers. The idea of foreignness is foreign. Commerce swirls and market dominance shifts. Western business orthodoxy entwines with eastern business philosophy and creates a whole new mind-set that embraces profit and competition as well as sustainability and collaboration. Globality is a blockbuster new script - action, drama, suspense, and road picture all packed into one - with a sprawling cast of characters and locations in every corner of the world." The authors explain why and how a "tsunami" wave of competition from global challengers (i.e. rapidly developing companies) has risen up and challenged established players, what they call "incumbents." In fact, developed companies now find themselves struggling to compete successfully in terms of cost differentials; "growing people" and then positioning them in proper alignment; market penetration; "pinpointing" (i.e. connecting with customers, distributing complexity, and reinventing the business model); rapid growth (by scaling up, building brands, filling capability gaps, and bartering); innovating with ingenuity; and embracing "manyness" (i.e. many countries, economies, markets, locations, and facilities but no centers, no home markets, no foreignness, or hierarchy of location). New mind-sets are needed if incumbents are to respond effectively to these and other challenges. When concluding their book, Sirkin, Hemerling, and Bhattacharya assert (and I wholly agree) that however much the global business community has changed and will continue to change, the measures of success will remain essentially the same. Business leaders will continue to think about their place in the world, about sustainability and scarce resources. Those whom the co-authors interviewed "always talk about their dreams. They speak about people they have known, in their factories and boardrooms, retail outlets, and warehouses. They talk about their companies as if they were families. Above all, they say they want their personal and professional lives to be meaningful and rich journeys. They want to build something. And they want it to endure." Meanwhile, the "tsunami" continues to surge....

Review # 2 was written on 2013-02-24 00:00:00 Carlos Bello Awesome|Fantastic|Must Read for MBAs, Managers| Strategy with Common Sense George Stalk has been a part of the Boston Consulting Group(BCG) and has brought out his insights with real time examples adopted by companies. The 5 strategies he talks about viz. 1. Supply Chain Gymnastics 2. Side-stepping Economies 3. Dynamic Pricing 4. Embracing Complexity 5. Utilizing Infinite Bandwith All these 5 strategies are to be adopted in this consumer centric environment of today. Although some of the companies have adopted one of these concepts into their business model, no one has yet tried implementing all the 5 together, which would give the perfect competitive advantage for the company. This is a book which initiates thought process, and if you are looking for solutions, then this is not the book. And as far as strategy is concerned, solutions are useless as they are already in practice and do not differentiate you from others.