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Tag Archives: Uncertainty-Paradox

Scenario Planning As A Spur To Entreprenurial Thinking

  By Fred H. Schlegel | October 15, 2009 - 10:38 pm | ,
6 Comments

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 external disruptive events, but it can improve an organization’s overall entrepreneurial capacity. Scenario planning has long been used to prepare for emergency events. Since the 9/11 terror attacks corporate use of scenario and contingency planning increased from 38% to over 70% of executives surveyed, again primarily as a means of preparing for external disruptive (exogenous) shocks. In the article, Beyond risk mitigation: Enhancing corporate innovation with scenario planning, William J. Worthington, Jamie D. Collins and Michael A. Hitt, show that “advanced use of scenario planning can help firms go beyond innovative responses to more complex … Continue reading →

Global Winds Driving The Uncertainty-Paradox

  By Fred H. Schlegel | September 29, 2009 - 2:28 pm |
4 Comments

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 decentralized everywhere. Toss a coin. People in high places are thinking about you. You can either view the coming disruptions as opportunities or tidal waves. Welcome to the Uncertainty-Paradox, it’s not just about big companies. It’s about you. Innovation is a personal enterprise, part of life-long learning that builds value in all different sorts of ways. For example, folks generating creative output are under some of the most visible pressure to change business models. This is true whether you are a large studio/publisher or one person art studio. It’s very uncomfortable, but not unexpected. Changes … Continue reading →

The 3 P’s of Innovation

  By Fred H. Schlegel | September 10, 2009 - 11:05 am |
8 Comments

If marketers have one failing (just one you ask?) it is our love of lists. Marketing’s 4 P’s (price, product, place, promotion) morphed into longer lists of p-words that seemed to work on the principle of ‘My list is longer than your list.’ (add power, people, performance, presence, pr,…) Long lists successfully masked the larger universality of the original 4 P’s adding to the departmentalization of marketing. So to try and reclaim lost ground we get holistic marketing from Kotler/Keller (no list slouch themselves) and the 3 V’s. Marketing involves satisfying consumers’ known (and subconscious unknown) needs. The 3 V’s is a value creation and delivery sequence to get marketers back to thinking about the whole package. As put forward by Lanning/Michaels at McKinsey & Co. the 3 V’s include ‘Choose the Value’, ‘Provide the Value’, and ‘Communicate the Value.’ I like holistic reminders of what a job entails, but … Continue reading →