Core Strategy

Unique insights are at the core of any viable investment thesis. Defining an investment thesis that effectively monetizes insight is challenging, but when done correctly, the rewards can be significant. Whether the focus is a capital market investment, corporate acquisition, or business case, it is essential to objectively validate, refute, or modify an investment thesis, make informed decisions as a result, and then take swift action.

• Does a combination of quantitative and qualitative data suggest that the thesis is viable?
• If not, what conditions would be necessary to make it viable?
• What is the range of returns that the investment could generate under different market scenarios?
• What ancillary opportunities exist to expand the value creation opportunity for the contemplated investment?
• What actions can we take to improve the viability of existing investments that have underperformed versus initial expectations?

Defining a growth engine for a business requires mechanisms that enable and expand revenue generation while achieving and sustaining economies of scale. Together, these vectors form the profit equation that gets a company, an individual business unit, or an initiative to breakeven and beyond. Businesses must be able to examine their existing organizations, business models, and initiatives through a lens of profitable growth, identify gaps and opportunities that can drive incremental or large-scale improvements, and then translate those insights into action.

• How can a business accelerate its revenue growth and pull forward the breakeven point? 
• Is there opportunity to expand the revenue opportunity within the existing business model, and are there viable options to also look outside the prevailing model? 
• What operational strategies and constructs can enhance scale efficiencies? 
• How can a business not only achieve profitable growth, but also sustain it in the midst of competitor actions and variable economic cycles? 

A company’s market offerings bring its value proposition to life for customers. The difference between a world-class company and everyone else is the uniqueness of its value proposition and its ability to successfully deliver on its customer promise over time. Defining product-market fit and a minimum-viable product is merely the starting point for a journey that continually evolves… success quickly becomes contingent on an organization’s innovation capabilities, linkage to the voice of the customer, ability to make decisions and take action with agility, and skill at managing product lifecycles.

• Have we thought holistically about the business and technical use cases that our offerings can potentially address, and what adjacencies have we not yet identified? 

• How differentiated are our products and services, and what actions can we take to enhance and sustain competitive differentiation? 

• How sophisticated and effective is our product portfolio strategy, and how can we enhance it to generate more value? 

• To what extent have we explored bundling strategies and virtual productization? 

• Is our pricing strategy leaving money on the table? 

• What mechanisms can we put in place to channel the voice of the customer and CX into our product innovation activities? 
• Does our product roadmap evolve the portfolio in ways that preserve and enhance competitive differentiation and pricing power over time?

A company is never alone in its defined market segment, even when it specializes in a niche it has pioneered. Competition takes many forms, the landscape of comparable players shifts, and new market offerings and business models that others introduce can quickly render previous ones less distinctive and relevant. Businesses that have achieved competitive differentiation must constantly strive to defend their uniqueness and not grow complacent. New entrants and businesses with less distinctive offerings must seek to achieve and sustain unique value propositions. The playing field is never static.

• How holistic, accurate, and insightful is our awareness of the market landscape and relevant emerging trends? 
• How strong is our ability to objectively and holistically assess current and potential threats?
• Do our innovation capabilities allow us to create credible differentiation that customers find valuable? 
• What strategic, organizational, and process constructs have we put in place to systematically and repeatedly assess and evolve the factors that define our differentiation? 
• How agile and effective are these constructs?

Businesses define the markets in which they compete based on the products and services they offer, the customer segments they serve, and the geographic location of those customers. As businesses grow and evolve, those parameters often change. Identifying and capturing optimization opportunities does not always imply an “all or nothing” approach, but may instead benefit from a more nuanced or phased approach. Recognizing viable opportunities to enter a new market can be just as valuable as knowing when and how to exit a currently-served market. When considering market entry and exit, the ability to navigate the landscape of options with agility, insight, and objective decision making is paramount. 

• Do we systematically and objectively seek to optimize economic returns within and across the portfolio? 
• How effective is inorganic growth likely to be in helping us achieve our business objectives? 
• To what extent are we positioned to effectively identify and pursue opportunistic expansion and contraction? 
• Can we improve our ability to create and preserve value through more intentional and effective market entry and exit strategies and programs?

Even as technological innovation increasingly automates and optimizes the workplace, human capital remains the essential common denominator of every business. People establish strategies to identify, validate, and prioritize opportunities. They create business processes to pursue those opportunities in systematic, effective, and efficient ways. They also architect, enable, and operate technology environments that complement the strategies and processes with automated activities that impart speed, quality, objectivity, repeatability, and scale effects. Organizational constructs enable specialization, coordinated collaboration, and optimization of activities within a business. The design of organizational entities can be a source of value or a factor that sub-optimizes the value creation opportunity.

• To what degree does our current organizational design align with our business model, our core processes, and prevailing constructs within our industry? 
• How should we approach organizational redesign in light of fundamental changes in the macroeconomic environment, our business model, competitive dynamics, or other key factors? 
• What organizational design elements from other industries and geographies are potentially relevant to our business, and how can we best assess and selectively incorporate these elements into our own organizational design? 
• Do we have a holistic understanding of the key interdependencies between our organizational entities and the business processes that they operate, as well as the risk factors associated with changing the organizational design?