How Do You Manage a Business Ecosystem?

It is widely acknowledged that business ecosystems offer great potential. Compared to more traditionally organized businesses, such as vertically integrated companies or hierarchical supply chains, business ecosystems are praised for their ability to foster innovation, scale quickly, and adapt to changing environments.

However, many companies that try to build their own ecosystems struggle to realize this potential. Our research has shown that less than 15% of … [ Read more ]

How Do You “Design” a Business Ecosystem?

If designing a traditional business model is like planning and building a house, designing an ecosystem is more like developing a whole residential district: more complex, more players to coordinate, more layers of interaction and unintended emergent outcomes.

What makes ecosystem design distinctive is that it requires a true system perspective. It is not sufficient to design the value creation and delivery model; the design must … [ Read more ]

Do You Need a Business Ecosystem?

The term “business ecosystem” has firmly established itself in the dictionary of management buzzwords. Many managers, fearful of missing out on this trend, feel compelled to come up with their own business ecosystems—or at least to become part of some large emerging ecosystems. But they struggle with the broad scope of the concept, unclear definitions, and the lack of practical advice. This article should help. … [ Read more ]

Unleashing the Innovation Power of Alliances

More companies are forging strategic alliances as they seek competitive advantage. Here’s what they must do to build and manage them successfully.

Why You Need an Operating Model: To Align Your People and Deliver You Strategy

Putting a new strategy into effect is always difficult. Andrew Campbell and Mikel Gutierrez provide a practical solution to designing the necessary changes: the Operating Model Canvas. They describe how they applied it to the merger between Siemens and Gamesa, demonstrating how this framework, along with its supporting tools, can help leaders to design changes in their organization and operations.

Building Trust in Business Ecosystems

Trust, we instinctively realize, is a precious quality that binds relationships, and nowhere more so than in business ecosystems. It’s foundational, but also fragile because all the participants in an ecosystem must learn to work with, and rely on, each other, knowing that no external force compels them to do so. Mutual trust, as much as mutual interest, binds business ecosystems.

Yet few business leaders focus … [ Read more ]

A Blue Ocean Compass for Your Post-Covid Strategy

Four questions to help you rethink industry logic and existing practices to prepare for a powerful comeback.

The Strategy-Analytics Revolution

It’s time to bring advanced analytics into the strategy room—here’s why.

The Quest for Sustainable Business Model Innovation

We have argued that corporations should Optimize for Both Social and Business Value, using their core businesses to deliver the financial returns expected by their owners and, in tandem, to help society meet its most significant challenges. To do so, we suggest that leaders reimagine corporate strategy by creating new modes of differentiation, embedding societal value into products and services, reimagining business models for sustainability, … [ Read more ]

How to Tell If Your Business Model Is Creating Environmental and Societal Benefits

BCG identifies six dimensions of environmental and societal impact, all with implications for employees and for external stakeholders, including investors, customers, suppliers, and society.

How to Tell If Your Business Model Is Truly Sustainable

How can companies assess which business model changes will enable the company to become genuinely more resilient and sustainable over time? We believe our insights from researching Sustainable Business Model Innovation (SBM-I) can help answer that question. Crossing all industries and geographies, our research analyzed more than 100 business models through which companies delivered both business value and environmental and societal benefits. We tested each … [ Read more ]

Four Steps to Sustainable Business Model Innovation

In our research, we have studied more than 100 cases of companies that are practicing what we call “Sustainable Business Model Innovation” (SBM-I). We have found that the most advanced of these companies, the “front-runners,” combine environmental, societal, and financial priorities to re-imagine their core business models and even shift the boundaries of competition. The core practice for SBM-I is an iterative 4-step innovation cycle. … [ Read more ]

Don’t Confuse Platforms with Ecosystems

A beginners’ guide to high-value business models.

Delivering on your promises

In The Ends Game, professors Marco Bertini and Oded Koenigsberg explain how companies can help their customers meet goals by rewriting the rules of commerce.

Make vs. Buy Revisited

Make or buy? To answer this classic manufacturing question, leading companies avoid the temptation to “feed the beast.” Instead, they focus on their core competencies and keep their long-term strategies in mind.

Three Degrees of Separation: How to Successfully Execute Divestitures

The seller’s focus on three key interrelated activities—defining, marketing, and disentangling—can help expedite the transfer of divested assets and increase total deal value.

6 Reasons Your Strategy Isn’t Working

Nearly every organization is grappling with huge strategic challenges, often with a need to reimagine its very purpose, identity, strategy, business model, and structure. Most of these efforts to transform will fail. And, in most cases, they will miss the mark not because the new strategy is flawed, but because the organization can’t carry it out.

My experience in working and studying corporate transformations points to … [ Read more ]

Why Your Next Transformation Should be ‘All In’

Improve the odds of a successful business transformation by going “all in” to kick-start performance and remake your portfolio.

How to Succeed in Uncertain Times

In a difficult environment, leaders need to resist the impulse to adopt a defensive pose. They must instead take actions that will position their organization for success.