War games, contingency planning, thought experiments all provide potential glimpses into the future that can help distribute knowledge, test reactions and improve flexible thinking. I’m a fan. So it was with some interest I noticed Business Horizons’ recent issue on entrepreneurship included a paper that strongly argues scenario planning not only prepares a corporation for [...]
Posts under ‘Strategic Fire’
Global Winds Driving The Uncertainty-Paradox
No matter how local your business appears, global forces are going to trip you up if they haven’t already. A corollary – all local markets will feel the impact of international competition and technological change. If your job doesn’t disappear into a digital vacuum, it very well could be centralized in Ohio or Korea. Or [...]
Are You A Business Uncertainty Explorer?
Sounds of the sea. Columbus stands on deck, referring to parchment, sextant and sky. First Mate: “Columbus, what’s that solid blue piece of paper?” Columbus: “That’s my map!” And The Crew Sings: “We are lost, we are lost, we are lost…” The Columbus in this sketch from my days in college radio goes on to [...]
The Power Of Familiar
The folks that bring us Pepsi, Tropicana and Gatorade have done the product management world a favor by performing a very large logo experiment in public. Tropicana went for a radical new package design dropping their familiar ‘straw in an orange’ image for what I consider a rather generic box. Gatorade traded the logo and [...]
Tackling the Uncertainty Paradox – An Introduction
Uncertainty can drive opportunity. Uncertainty can also drive you mad and destroy your company. Bummer. Bill Welter (Adaptive Strategies), Kay Plantes (Plantes Company) and I have been discussing how the uncertainty caused by stronger, less predictable and more frequent disruptions can be as large a source of opportunity as it is a threat. We’ve been [...]
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