The COVID-19 disaster, with its unpredictability and turbulence, has disrupted the way in which corporations construct their enterprise methods. Mark Esposito, Alessandro Lanteri, and Terence Tse write that two technique frameworks mixed can grow to be a part of a brand new strategic structure to empower companies to determine and pursue progress alternatives within the post-pandemic world financial system.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant disruptor for tried and examined approaches to technique. Extra particularly, it has promoted two enterprise practices: digital transformation and sustainability. Even because the pandemic nonetheless impacts our lives, corporations are stepping up their efforts and new imperatives and enterprise fashions hold rising as a validation of latest organisational practices and norms. The pandemic has not solely modified our notion of the world however equally accelerated our adoption of latest work and manufacturing fashions which grow to be seen and form a ‘new regular.’ How do enterprise leaders seize the alternatives within the new regular?
A strategic alliance between fledging frameworks
To efficiently navigate the upheaval attributable to the pandemic, enterprise leaders should rethink their technique. Two of the important thing technique questions they have to reply are: the place their firm will play and the way it will win. This text gives two research-based frameworks to reply these two crucial questions.
To reply the primary query, DRIVE (Tse and Esposito, 2017) assists decision-makers in monitoring the megatrends that form the aggressive panorama and in figuring out main rising alternatives, which conventional instruments for strategic planning may solely seize when it’s too late. For the second query, CLEVER (Lanteri, 2019) factors out the drivers of strategic benefit decision-makers ought to leverage to take care of a aggressive edge. Collectively, the 2 frameworks represent the muse of a brand new strategic structure that empower companies to determine progress alternatives and efficiently organise to pursue them within the turbulent, post-pandemic world financial system.
From macro to micro evaluation
The 2 frameworks had been initially designed with a deal with companies’ future health, integrating adaptable and versatile thought processes of their functioning. They had been designed as non-exhaustive devices to know the move of the occasions during which we live, in an more and more advanced world, the place linear fashions of distribution are much less and fewer practical to the aim of prediction and forecast.
Determine 1. A solution to determine progress alternatives
As proven in determine 1, the macro degree of research assesses the atmosphere and the character of the forces which can be shaping the circumstances for enterprise and public coverage to function. From the scanning of the externalities to the detection of grassroot actions, to the invention of progress fashions that conventional financial indicators can simply miss, this degree of research is critical to find out the magnitude and path of the traits.
The meso degree of research refers back to the institutional and intermediated degree of the financial system during which a series of entities operates as connectors between forces on the macro, and execution on the micro degree. The meso degree gives alternatives for formulation of technique and ideation of enterprise fashions that probe markets and reconfigure methods.
The micro degree entails probably the most energetic brokers within the financial system, together with customers and people, who make selections based mostly on restricted info, sentiments and entry to alternatives. It’s the place markets get validated and the place decision-making blends theoretical assumptions with projectable actionability and the place the socio-economic system allows itself.
Our frameworks mix all three evaluation ranges in rigorous analysis with sensible design aimed toward facilitating the transformation of methods. A deeper understanding emerges from the character of the traits in addition to from the ideation of how the traits can form technique.
Understanding how ’DRIVE’ brings the macro degree of research to life
Through the analysis, we investigated the junctions the place present macro traits set the trajectory for future occasions. Within the huge ocean of data, info, and knowledge, we discovered 5 undercurrents that can provide us some instructions as to how the long run would unfold. These 5 paths aren’t unique or exhaustive. Most are seemingly a minimal illustration of all undercurrents that interaction with the shaping forces of our societies, however with this in thoughts, we’ve narrowed the analysis down to 5 megatrends, which we name the DRIVE framework, consisting of the next:
- Demographic and Social Adjustments
- Useful resource Shortage
- Inequalities
- Volatility, Scale, and Complexity
- Enterprising (Dynamic)
Every of those megatrends is exclusive, however, together, they will current a complete image of what the long run holds and assist us image a future within the making.
Discovering the CLEVER means
Wanting by means of the meso-level lens, CLEVER lays out the drivers and forces that supply strategic benefits and – due to this fact – set off strategic change. The drivers are:
- Collaborative intelligence
- Studying methods
- Exponential applied sciences
- Worth facilitation
- Moral championship
- Responsive decision-making.
The primary three characterize the ‘onerous’ options—the technological elements, with the remaining three capturing decision-making and managerial types. Desk 2 describes the definition and strategic benefits of every driver in addition to illustrative examples and counterexamples.
Desk 2. The weather of the CLEVER framework (click on to enlarge picture)
DRIVE + CLEVER
The problem on this new regular is figuring out present frameworks that may assist synthesize a number of the points we face. The 2 frameworks we talk about right here seize rising approaches to strategic decision-making and collectively assist decision-makers determine progress alternatives and efficiently organise to pursue them within the turbulent, post-pandemic world financial system.
These frameworks don’t aspire to be good. In turbulent occasions, with multi-causal patterns and non-linear trajectories of change, the long run can’t be predicted. So, even geared up with the DRIVE and the CLEVER frameworks, decision-makers may nonetheless face sudden black swans and wildcards that result in surprising circumstances and quickly shifting aggressive situations.
The frameworks ought to as a substitute be judged by their usefulness. Within the years spent researching and refining our frameworks, we’ve witnessed first-hand how they’ve been utilized in dozens of corporations throughout industries and geographies. Enterprise leaders can use the 2 frameworks to grasp the place strategic alternatives emerge, to seek out inspiration for strategic motion, and so guarantee their organisations grow to be future-ready within the post-pandemic period.
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Notes:
Building the strategic architecture of the post pandemic corporate landscape