How Strategic Imagination Happens - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org - 0 views
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shared by raheel naqvi on 26 Jan 09
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How Strategic Imagination Happens
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That's this: thinking differently about strategy is impossible - or, perhaps worse, that it's naïve.
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Let's take a second to explore.
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Strategy isn't written in stone. Rather strategy is built upon a given set of economics - at the simplest level, a set of payoffs.
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Today's economics are in shock - numerous shocks are rolling across the global economic landscape.
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As economics changes, so must strategy. What was "strategic" yesterday is less and less strategic today.
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And that requires us to have strategic imagination: to be able to imagine fundamentally new possibilities for truly strategic behaviour.
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Now, that's hard work. Very few companies are able to tap - let alone master - strategic imagination.
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Why not? Strategic imagination is tremendously difficult because it requires us to put aside yesterday's tired assumptions and orthodoxies, and begin to actively rethink from scratch the way value can be, should be, must be, will be created.
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The surest, most lethal killer of strategic imagination is being reined in by orthodoxy: thinking that tomorrow must be like yesterday.
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Here are a few examples of strategic imagination:
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It was naïve for Apple to think that it could make a better mobile phone from scratch - and that a simple phone could redesign the rotting mobile value chain - or so Nokia and Sony Ericsson thought. It was naïve for Tata to believe that a car affordable for the world's poor could ever be designed, let alone produced - or so Detroit thought. It was naïve for Google to focus on doing no evil before focusing on revenue and profitability - or so Big Media thought. It was naïve for P&G to open up, and explore radical new modes of interaction, instead of pursuing orthodox advantage by staying closed - or so Wal-Mart thought. It was naïve for H&M and Zara to imagine that cheap clothes could be hyperfashionable - more fashionable than couture - or so the Gap thought. What do these examples have in common? They're examples of strategic imagination that required firms to be naïve: to start from scratch, to see, in Technicolor, a better world not constrained by today's stifling and suffocating status quo. Ratan Tata, in the article above, talks about a "leap of faith". That's the next stage of strategic imagination: being able to see and then believe in a vastly different, radically better future - and not being limited to seeing and believing in a grainy, washed-out future that seems depressingly inevitable.
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But taking leaps of faith is exactly what orthodox firms are built not to do.
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The edgeconomy demands firms explode their capacity for strategic imagination.
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That's why only a single player on that list is an orthodox incumbent - P&G: the rest are new entrants, or lateral entrants.
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Another example. I've been talking about artificial scarcity quite a bit. Here's JP Rangaswami discussing responding to artificial scarcity with artificial abundance. Now that's the beginnings of strategic imagination.
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Edge strategy isn't for incrementalists. Those who think games built for an industrial era are still the only ones worth playing need not apply.
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Rather, it takes a profound appetite for revolution: a profound ability to let go of yesterday's stale, tired, and thoroughly toxic orthodoxies - to explode the shrunken, stunted strategic imagination the industrial-era firm suffers from.