The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) will win hearts, minds and pockets with its 50th-anniversary publication, Own the Future, which is creatively structured as 50 lessons for businesses that want to stay in business in a rapidly and unpredictably changing world.
Whether you are a CEO of a large global business, a mid-manager eager to grow, or a student or teacher of business, here’s a book that you can open to a random page and be sure to find a gem of an idea, an approach or a good practice that will work for you — any day, any time. In a world of speed and interconnectivity, every business leader needs an interpreter and a re-teller to condense the metadata of global business and summarise it into guideposts — and in that respect, the book does well.
Written by BCG partners and practice leaders on the basis of their work with organisations across the world, the publication stakes its claim to do two definitive things by playing to win in today’s market while developing a sustainable business for tomorrow: to help leaders make a statement of purpose regarding the future, and to achieve the bedrock of success today. The book explores the competitive imperative and the social imperative through 10 themes: adaptability, globalisation, connectedness, sustainability, customer focus, competitiveness, value orientation, trust, boldness and inspiration.
Companies should compete on capabilities, rather than on products and service. Capability-based companies grow by transferring their essential business processes to new geographies and to new businesses. Globalisation, however, is not about transferring existing business models and products to new markets; it is about figuring out new products and business models while competing “with everybody from everywhere on everything”. The global challengers are proving to be a match for the incumbents and are redefining products, costs, processes — everything. Emerging new cities have a chapter in the BCG collection — they are that important.
Digitise or die — there’s no getting away from the digital imperative. Finding a smart strategy to deal with data flows and information asymmetries is no longer optional. Well-managed conversations with customers have overtaken broadcast messages.
Surging population and growing economies are the twin propellers of the sustainability imperative — forcing businesses and governments to find ways to make more efficient use of limited natural resources. However, sustainability strategies, too, cannot simply be exported from the West to other economies. Even the term “sustainability” is not understood uniformly. The examples of Shree Cement and Jain Irrigation are cited to show how resource-use reduction and affordability are values that have been successfully espoused under the umbrella of sustainability. A valuable insight is that sustainability can be achieved by making room for growth within the resource constraints.
The middle section of the book further explores the battle “for the bulge” — the bulging middle class in the rapidly developing economies, including customer segmentation, building a high-performance organisation and getting pricing and information technology strategies right.
The best writing is reserved for the end. In the section on trust, we learn about reputation versus reciprocity; the return of the state in the affairs of business; how collaboration is taking place through “obsession, interaction and a light touch”; and leveraging plentiful cheap transactions. And, finally, we learn that we should be thinking in new boxes, not out of the boxes, since boxes bring structure and discipline and are necessary for productive creativity. We learn how to do scenario planning with speed, and why low cost is not a choice. We hear why inspiration is important — as “people’s motivation is the input, sales and financial performance are the output”. We learn to ask the “five whys”, as they do at Toyota, and to be smartly simple. The last few pages are littered with many more gems that are left for the reader to find.
The chapters are short and mostly easy to read. If there is scope for improvement, it would be in providing better cross-referencing between the chapters.
OWN THE FUTURE
50 Ways to Win from The Boston
Consulting Group
Edited by Michael Deimler, Richard Lesser,
David Rhodes and Janmejaya Singh
(The Boston Consulting Group)
John Wiley & Sons; 374 pages; $34.95
Whether you are a CEO of a large global business, a mid-manager eager to grow, or a student or teacher of business, here’s a book that you can open to a random page and be sure to find a gem of an idea, an approach or a good practice that will work for you — any day, any time. In a world of speed and interconnectivity, every business leader needs an interpreter and a re-teller to condense the metadata of global business and summarise it into guideposts — and in that respect, the book does well.
Written by BCG partners and practice leaders on the basis of their work with organisations across the world, the publication stakes its claim to do two definitive things by playing to win in today’s market while developing a sustainable business for tomorrow: to help leaders make a statement of purpose regarding the future, and to achieve the bedrock of success today. The book explores the competitive imperative and the social imperative through 10 themes: adaptability, globalisation, connectedness, sustainability, customer focus, competitiveness, value orientation, trust, boldness and inspiration.
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Plenty of books have been written on all these topics, but what makes Own the Future stand out is its efficient organisation of ideas to make the point it seeks to make. In the first chapter, we encounter a framework for thinking through our strategy-making strategies. In the second chapter, we learn from the winners and losers among American media companies about the ability to learn and act, the willingness to experiment, and skills required to mobilise an organisation. Diversity – in capabilities, options and experimentation – is key to adaptability. The adaptive leaders of today are quite different from the classical helmer, and they need a different skill set. The new leaders are all around us. An executive is quoted as saying: “If you call a meeting and people show up, you’re a leader.”
Companies should compete on capabilities, rather than on products and service. Capability-based companies grow by transferring their essential business processes to new geographies and to new businesses. Globalisation, however, is not about transferring existing business models and products to new markets; it is about figuring out new products and business models while competing “with everybody from everywhere on everything”. The global challengers are proving to be a match for the incumbents and are redefining products, costs, processes — everything. Emerging new cities have a chapter in the BCG collection — they are that important.
Digitise or die — there’s no getting away from the digital imperative. Finding a smart strategy to deal with data flows and information asymmetries is no longer optional. Well-managed conversations with customers have overtaken broadcast messages.
Surging population and growing economies are the twin propellers of the sustainability imperative — forcing businesses and governments to find ways to make more efficient use of limited natural resources. However, sustainability strategies, too, cannot simply be exported from the West to other economies. Even the term “sustainability” is not understood uniformly. The examples of Shree Cement and Jain Irrigation are cited to show how resource-use reduction and affordability are values that have been successfully espoused under the umbrella of sustainability. A valuable insight is that sustainability can be achieved by making room for growth within the resource constraints.
The middle section of the book further explores the battle “for the bulge” — the bulging middle class in the rapidly developing economies, including customer segmentation, building a high-performance organisation and getting pricing and information technology strategies right.
The best writing is reserved for the end. In the section on trust, we learn about reputation versus reciprocity; the return of the state in the affairs of business; how collaboration is taking place through “obsession, interaction and a light touch”; and leveraging plentiful cheap transactions. And, finally, we learn that we should be thinking in new boxes, not out of the boxes, since boxes bring structure and discipline and are necessary for productive creativity. We learn how to do scenario planning with speed, and why low cost is not a choice. We hear why inspiration is important — as “people’s motivation is the input, sales and financial performance are the output”. We learn to ask the “five whys”, as they do at Toyota, and to be smartly simple. The last few pages are littered with many more gems that are left for the reader to find.
The chapters are short and mostly easy to read. If there is scope for improvement, it would be in providing better cross-referencing between the chapters.
OWN THE FUTURE
50 Ways to Win from The Boston
Consulting Group
Edited by Michael Deimler, Richard Lesser,
David Rhodes and Janmejaya Singh
(The Boston Consulting Group)
John Wiley & Sons; 374 pages; $34.95