To thrive on disruption, successful incumbents channel their capabilities into broader “market activities.” Their goal: Become indispensable within a diverse network of partners. Even as industries and technologies change, these market activities are sufficiently core to business in general that they will almost certainly remain relevant.
That’s what makes a market activity different from—and more advantageous than—a traditional industry role. An industry role takes a static view of key players—for example, who the customers are and what they want, who the logical partners would be, where to find suppliers and how to contract with wholesalers. By contrast, a market activity is defined by a core set of capabilities that can be adapted in other contexts beyond today’s product, service, customer or partner focus.
After studying the strategies of successful incumbents, we came to realize that there are only four activities that matter today in any broad network of partners: Inventing, producing, designing and assembling. To protect against being disrupted out of existence, successful incumbents are choosing to become world-class in one or more of these four activities.
Authors: Joshua B. Bellin, Paul F. Nunes
Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture)
Subjects: Management, Strategy
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