Business Intelligence

Expanding Your Business Around the Corner or Across the Globe

by Arthur Rubinfeld and Collins Hemingway (14500)

Great national and international retail success stories don’t happen by accident. It isn’t just a case of opening a store, making that store run well and then duplicating that first store ad infinitum. Instead, retail brands that win long term have been designed for rapid growth right from the outset. All of the necessary elements have been put in place first so growth becomes a natural part of the ongoing story rather than good fortune.

In particular, there are four phases involved in growing a great retail business:

1. Aspire to become a national / global brand
2. Prepare to expand right from the outset
3. Build your brand prominence by locating astutely
4. Maintain brand leadership by pushing the envelope

Retail businesses are great because they allow you to control your own destiny and to express your creativity. When you create a new retail business from the ground up, you build a market presence that is highly valuable. To get to this stage, however, a holistic approach will be required. You’ll need to conceive of a profitable retail concept and fine-tune your ideas in your local market first. Then you’ll need to understand how to expand from one market to another until you grow from one market to dominance and presence in regional, national and ultimately international markets. As your enterprise grows and evolves, you’ll need to keep your brand fresh and vibrant by continuing to innovate and try new things.

Built for Growth

40 Strategic Moves that Drive Exceptional Business Growth

by Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan (14400)

A “Market Buster” is a game changer in the world of business. It is defined as a powerful strategic move that alters the competitive landscape in such a way that it puts your company firmly on the road to high growth.

There are five overall strategic themes and forty strategic moves within those themes that all marketbusters use:

1. Change the customer experience: Make it simpler, faster or better for customers
2. Reconfigure products, services: Make your offerings appreciably better
3. Redefine business and metrics: Change how customers do business with you
4. Anticipate future industry shifts: Exploit changes before competitors can react
5. Create a new market space: Trigger the emergence of a new market

To trigger rapid growth for your own organization, don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Instead, decide which strategic theme and which strategic move within that theme you want to use, and focus on executing that strategic move exceptionally well.

Market Busters

Practical Ideas From The Best Brains in Business
Joel Kurtzman (09100)

At one level, business isn’t as difficult to master as the business schools and other sellers of educational courses would have you believe. To be successful in business, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist. In fact, if you want to be well rounded and successful, there are ten key areas you’ll need to have some knowledge and expertise in:

1. Innovation
Always keep refininig and improving the product or service you sell.

2. Sustainability
Businesses must do more than make money — thye must contribute.

3. Accounting
For capital markets to exist, accurate financial information is required.

4. Strategy
For companies, strategy is all about direction and thinking clearly.

5. Managing
Good managers learn more from the people they manage than they teach.

6. Human Resources
Smart businesses stay that way by sharing knowledge between people.

7. Leadership
Self-improvement is the foundation on which successful leadership is built.

8. Marketing
Marketing and advertising are long-term investments, not expenses.

9. Communication
Communication can mean the difference between success and failure.

10. Execution
The best way to learn is to study the slip-ups of others and avoid them.

I have asked some of the best minds in business to put down some of their best thoughts. I have asked them to be candid, open, and opinionated. I have asked them to tackle the subjects they love from perspectives that they know work. I have asked them to give readers a glimpse of how they think about what they do. My goal is to help readers shift their vantage points, shake up their thinking, and stretch their minds.

–Joel Kurtzman

MBA in a Box

(13800)

Leading Effective Execution and Change
Lawrence Hrebiniak

The key to actually executing a chosen strategy is what happens after the decision is made. If things are left to their natural path, most businesses will fail to execute their chosen strategy, and will instead continue doing what they have always done. To get an organization to implement a chosen strategy successfully, a unified and integrated approach to execution is required.

To make your chosen strategy work, concentrate on getting five key factors right as well as paying attention to the context:

1. Corporate Strategy –> 2, 3
2. Corporate structure Integration –> 3, 4
3. Business strategy Short-term objectives –> 4, 5
4. Business structure –> 5
5. Incentives and controls

The context
1. The organization’s ability to manage change
2. The culture of the organization
3. The organizational power structure
4. The overall leadership climate

Making Strategy Work

This was a very interesting read that we can all learn from:

The Google Enigma