Countering strategic risk with pattern thinking: How to identify tomorrow’s profit zones before the competition

Companies face numerous types of risk, and they hedge or insure against them in a variety of ways. However, the largest potential risk to a corporation–strategic risk–must be borne directly by managers and shareholders. They face the consequences if a company’s shareholder value collapses, stagnates, or becomes dwarfed by a competitor’s. Pattern thinking can help managers both foresee risk and identify new profit opportunities that will lead to sustained, above-average value growth. Mercer Management Consulting research has described thirty patterns that, over the past two decades, have drastically shifted profit and power in numerous industries; we expect that number to increase as new patterns are discerned. The ability to identify strategic patterns helps managers see beneath the surface chaos of today’s business environment to the underlying drivers of customer and economic behavior. It also provides a shortcut to managers who, in a world where the useful life of business designs is growing ever shorter, must rapidly assess options and place bets on future moves.

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