When it comes to growth strategies, what works inside Core often fails at the edge or beyond.
Inside Core, straightforward strategies usually work for initiative headlines such as market penetration, geographic expansion, customer loyalty, and product line extensions. These initiatives thrive on knowns — data, plans, execution. But at the edge of Core the level of uncertainty skyrockets. Standard playbooks fall apart. An agile, hypotheses/experiment-driven approach becomes essential.
There are two practical ways to spot if your growth initiative is at the edge:
- Changes to the Business Model Canvas: If your initiative alters two or more elements of the Business Model Canvas, you’re at the edge.
- Capabilities: If your company’s existing capabilities don’t cut it, you’re navigating uncharted territory.
Capability example 1: One of our MedTech clients wanted to move from selling diagnostic devices to a diagnostic-as-a-service model. New capabilities needed included:
- Remote monitoring and predictive maintenance,
- Service-level management
- Service-level-based accounting, etc.
The insight: Customer Care had to evolve from a back-office function to a front-line activity.
Capability example 2: Amazon disrupting itself to enter the digital media business. When it created the first Kindle, Amazon leveraged existing capabilities such as brand and association with books, high-traffic website, back-end systems and collaborating with publishing houses.
Yet at the same time it built new capabilities such as hardware design/engineering, supply chain management, software for the Kindle device, Digital Publishing and content licensing, incl. Digital Rights Management, and retail and marketing of consumer electronics (The full case study is in the recent book “NOW and NEW”).
Bottom line: To choose the right success formula for your growth initiatives, check if your initiative is inside, at the edge, or beyond Core. The Business Model Canvas, especially the left side focused on capabilities, is your quick litmus test.
Are your growth initiatives really inside the box — or are they at the edge or maybe even beyond? Corporate innovators and senior managers: Do you have what it takes to succeed at the edge or beyond?