How smart companies are opening up strategic initiatives to involve front-line employees, experts, suppliers, customers, entrepreneurs, and even competitors.
Why are some of the world’s most successful companies able to stay ahead of disruption, adopting and implementing innovative strategies, while others struggle? It’s not because they hire a new CEO or expensive consultants but rather because these pioneering companies have adopted a new way of strategizing. Instead of keeping strategic deliberations within the C-Suite, they open up strategic initiatives to a diverse group of stakeholders—front-line employees, experts, suppliers, customers, entrepreneurs, and even competitors. Open Strategy presents a new philosophy, key tools, step-by-step advice, and fascinating case studies—from companies that range from Barclays to Adidas—to guide business leaders in this groundbreaking approach to strategy.
The authors—business-strategy experts from both academia and management consulting—introduce tools for each of the three stages of strategy-making: idea generation, plan formulation, and implementation. These are digital tools (including strategy contests), which allow the widest participation; hybrid digital/in-person tools (including a “nightmare competitor challenge”); a workshop tool that gamifies the business model development process; and tools that help companies implement and sustain open strategy efforts.
Open strategy has an astonishing track record: a survey of 200 business leaders shows that although open-strategy techniques were deployed for only 30 percent of their initiatives, those same initiatives generated 50 percent of their revenues and profits. This book offers a roadmap for this kind of success.
Author(s): Christian Stadler, Julia Hautz, Kurt Matzler, Stephan Friedrich von den Eichen
Series: Management on the Cutting Edge
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 296
City: Cambridge
Contents
Foreword by Gary Hamel
Series Foreword
Introduction: Win with Open Strategy
How to Use This Book
1. Traditional Strategy Come Undone
Isomorphous Strategies
Unimaginative Strategies
Biased Strategies
Unpopular Strategies
Beyond Traditional Strategy
2. Are You Truly Ready to Open Up?
Question 1: Do You Prefer Miles Davis or Sebastian Bach?
Question 2: Are You A “Yes, and” Kind of Leader?
Question 3: Can You Handle Serendipity?
Question 4: Do You Welcome Diverse Ideas?
Question 5: Do You Gravitate toward Partnerships?
Question 6: Do You Welcome the Revolution?
Question 7: Do You Possess A Growth Mindset?
Test Your Openness
Tips for Opening Up Your Mind
In Sum
3. Design Your Open Strategy Process
Question 1: How Wide Should You Open Your Strategy?
Question 2: Should You Involve Internal or External Participants?
Question 3: Should you Mobilize a Small Group or a Large Crowd?
Question 4: Should You Choose a Digital or an Analog Format?
Question 5: Should You Carefully Select Participants or Extend an Open Invitation?
Answering the Five Questions
In Sum
4. Tweak Your Open Strategy Initiative to Allow for Secrecy
Toward a Rational Approach to Secrecy
Merging Secrecy with Openness: The US Navy
Develop a Protection Strategy
In Sum
5. Harness the Wisdom of Crowds
Online Open Strategy Contests
Strategy Communities
Build a Strategy Community That Works
In Sum
6. Peer into the Future
Experts Aren’t Clairvoyants
The IMP Trend Radar Process
In Sum
7. Disrupt Yourself before Others Do
Challenge 1: Cognitive Limitations
Challenge 2: Motivating People to Act
Setting Up a Nightmare Competitor Challenge
Navigating the Complexity of Digital
In Sum
8. Develop Killer Business Models
The Trouble with Business Models
Working with the Business Logic Contest
The Broader Uses of Business Model Logic Contests
In Sum
9. Use the Crowd to Choose Better Strategies
Crowdsourcing’s Untapped Potential
The Accuracy of Prediction Markets
Running Prediction Markets
Preference or Idea Markets
Crowd Predictions and Decisions
In Sum
10. Execute Better
The Power of Strategy Jams
Running A Strategy Jam
Social Networks: Mobilizing Organizations beyond the Jam
In Sum
Epilogue
1. Open Up Gradually
2. Set Up New Structures and Develop Capabilities
3. Amplify External Voices
4. Don’t Treat Open Strategy as a “Fair Weather” Approach
5. Clarify Decision Rights
6. Deepen Your Understanding of Open Strategy
Appendix A: Recommended Reading
Appendix B: The IMP Story
Notes
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Index
