Exponential
The Strategy X Blog
A strategically curated perspective just for you
Strategic Planning is Dead. Embrace Responsive Growth.
Staff • 15 January 2021
Strategic Planning is dead. Or at least what we once knew as strategic planning – that exercise of defining and setting into concrete some long–term strategy that is going to take our business to the next level in its journey – is dead. Indeed, there was once a day – some ways back in our collective industrial past – when a business leader could concoct and set into motion…
The Power of a Simple Question
Staff • 18 December 2020
We like questions. More than answers. Questions have the power to move businesses because they have the power to move the imaginations of those who lead businesses. Answers are great when their time has come, but most businesses jump to answers far too soon, without first asking – and savoring – the right questions. On Strategic Inquiry. In our world…
Why Resilient Organizations Embrace Strategic Innovation
Staff • 20 November 2020
According to the American Enterprise Institute, 89% of the businesses listed on the Fortune 500 in 1955 are no longer on the list. Many no longer exist. Of those 500 businesses, only 61 still remain. Those businesses – names like Boeing, Kellogg, Procter and Gamble, IBM, and Whirlpool – have remained because of one thing — a willingness to do whatever it takes to remain…
Staff • 16 October 2020
Many people – and we will be the first to admit that this includes some in the innovation consulting community – are of the belief that innovation is all about creativity and the ability to be creative. While, admittedly, creativity is an important constituency of innovation practice, and we wouldn't get too far without it, it is most certainly not the end-all of the matter. Rather…
Customer Co-Creation: A Deeper Path to Empathic Understanding
Staff • 18 September 2020
Each year businesses spend an aggregate of $40B on market research. This is largely in an effort to mine new insights about customers' unmet needs, or to test out new ideas to see if a large enough segment of their customers (or of the general population) will react positively to them. Businesses have begun to realize however that rather than – or in some cases, in…
Trend Timing — The Innovator's Secret Weapon
Staff • 21 August 2020
Many successful innovations succeed because they correctly address emerging trends. These trends can be driven by a whole host of factors – technology, evolving lifestyles (e.g., urbanization, gentrification, etc.), economic events, political events, government regulations, and so on. Sometimes these trends can be seen coming from afar (e.g., urbanization…
Bursting the Dam — The ‘Tipping Point’ Market Opportunities
Staff • 17 July 2020
In our work, we spend a lot of time conceiving, considering, and evaluating new business, brand, and product ideas — some ours, some others. This is all in the name of unearthing new market opportunities through new and innovative value propositions. Some of these ideas are good and some are – well – more of a solution still trying to find their problem…
Racing Toward the Singularity — Earth's Final 35 Years with Human Beings
Staff • 19 June 2020
It would seem that we now find ourselves and our world in the very center of one of those quickening maelstroms of time that lead to some sort of inconceivable singularity — a point where the pulse quickens so fast that the only way out is to awaken to some other consciousness of reality. It all started around 1760, and will end somewhere around…
What's In Your Sandbox?
Staff • 15 May 2020
It's no secret that the Lean Startup model has achieved its own level of notoriety? It has been a favorite subject of bloggers and media professionals around the world. Which is a good thing really, as it creates the occasion for us to examine what is the ‘best’ way to launch new brands, products, and businesses. There are, in fact, two rather divergent models in play, both…
Seven Roads of Innovation-Driven Growth
Staff • 17 April 2020
Most organizations are in need of finding new ways to grow. It might be a matter of finding new markets, even creating new markets, or just finding new space in your current markets through new technology and products. It doesn't matter which of these it is, the pressure is always the same. And it's unrelenting. Given a business environment characterized by…
When Disruptive Innovation Gets Disrupted
Staff • 20 March 2020
Imagine the following scenario. Your organization has conceived the perfect idea for a new product innovation. In fact, it will be the most disruptive innovation in this product category in decades. The technology is there and you have line of sight to executing it… or so you think. Six, nine, even twelve months into technical development, you come to…
Ignoring the Reflection… Innovation Through a Two-Way Mirror
Staff • 21 February 2020
In the pursuit of new business innovation, one of the most commonly used and effective methods is that of deconstruction and reconstruction. In this method, one deconstructs some element of their business (for example, the value basis of a product or service offering) and then attempts to reconstruct a new incarnation of it using a mix of alternative practices…