What we can do for you

We regularly publish information, views, analyses, opinions, and more, here. And we trust that these posts add value.

While that's good, the positive impacts are so much bigger when value is added to large groups of people; to organisations. And our track record of successful interventions proves that such value-add, leading to outperformance, is the case.

So, what business-to-business value can we add? Let's describe it. And, this description, alone, should add value too and be more than a mere CV (or 'advertisement').

Achievement requires actions

Achievement is the result of actions; i.e. doing things

This leads to two questions.

1. What must be done?
2. How must it be done?

In many companies both the 'what must be done?' and 'how must it be done?' are on autopilot. This we see regularly.

What must be done?

Let's say that there is a business that successfully operates in a defined niche.

Where does the money go?

To be successful, directors (and especially the CEO) must excel at capital allocation. As Warren Buffet said: "Once they become CEOs, they face new responsibilities. They now must make capital allocation decisions, a critical job that they may have never tackled and that is not easily mastered."

A successful company's allocation of funds to mergers/acquisitions vs. debt/dividend/share-buyback payments vs. organic growth will be 'good'. Hence many CEOs and boards-of-directors are rewarded based on measures such as Return on Invested Capital (ROIC).

Where do we operate?

Good sets of directors will constantly adjust the outlines of the niche; i.e. expand and/or contract the coverage of the niche. These types of changes are usually achieved through (proactive) projects and/or through concomitant operational changes.

Are we behind?

Even a successful company may, at times, still fall behind; i.e., behind what is happening elsewhere. Then it may make sense to initiate (reactive) projects to bring the environment up to date.

We must work like this?

A large percentage of successful-today organisations work exactly as described above.

They are good at capital allocation. And, they are also good at the types of actions - such as deal-making and negotiation - that go hand in hand with good capital allocation. Furthermore, they also expand and contract their niches, and they catch up when they have to.

Here's the rub though. While 'today' belongs to those who are in niches where they do well, 'tomorrow' may not belong to them anymore. We can provide countless examples, across the globe, of where niche-winners suddenly found themselves in mortal danger due to innovation and change happening elsewhere. By now, you will be familiar with many such examples (such as Blackberry and Nokia in just one niche, for example). Let's therefore mention a completely different example: Tennis starting to lose to Padel.

So, yes, doing the 'what must be done' (as outlined above), is not enough.

So, what else must be done?

Tomorrow will only belong to you if you:
(1) agree that tomorrow will almost certainly not look like today,
(2) then act accordingly and do entirely new things.

What will tomorrow bring?

How will others change what tomorrow will be?
How can we decide what tomorrow will be?

There are many questions to answer:

How can we figure out what types of innovation (and/or other types of change) are happening out there that may have significant negative impacts, or, conversely, bring significant positive opportunities in our niche? How can we detect signs of potentially important developments early enough? How can we do horizon scanning? How can we then make sense of these possible threats and/or opportunities? And, when we make sense of it, how does that impact our strategy?

These are the types of questions that we can help answer based on (a) our advanced academic backgrounds such as postgraduate qualifications in Future Studies and (b) wide sets of experience of doing exactly this for clients.

How must it be done?

Tinkering with our niche and/or falling behind are both typically dealt with through projects (as stated above) and through relatively small business-as-usual adjustments. In these cases, in environments where there is 'relative certainty', it is possible to build trustworthy (enough) business cases to justify project costs.

But, what if the horizon-scanning and the threat/opportunity conclusions (once we have made sense of what we found) highlight mortal dangers and/or potential outperformance opportunities?

And, what if any associated project business case would really just be guesswork - when it is simply not possible to analyse the opportunity properly? I.e., what if vehicles such as projects are not the right choices, but options such as ventures become the best approach?

Most companies can run projects well, but most also don't know how to run ventures properly - or even really know how and why ventures differ from projects.

And what if it is not clear exactly how to drive this opportunity forward in corporate environments that are often very change-averse? What types of people are needed? What types of organisational structure changes (such as creating innovation hubs) are necessary?

How do we allocate capital to such opportunities?

How do we approach such nebulous (but, potentially also fabulous) opportunities?

These, yet again, are the types of questions that we can answer, based on wide sets of experience of doing exactly this. I.e. we can complete the chain of work between futurist types of work, to making sense of the horizon scanning, to appropriate strategy formulation, and to eventual business success. We have have had huge successes doing exactly this.