India's leading management portal MBAUniverse.com has officially tied-up with UK based Thinkers 50, to present this global ranking of business gurus. Read on for detailed profiles of these global thinkers who are reshaping the strategy and business maps.
Gary Hamel: Strategy Icon for the new Business World
The opinionated, sometimes acerbic, voice of contemporary strategy, Gary Hamel (b. 1954) is co-author of Competing for the Future and, more recently, leading the Revolution (2000). Hamel looks set to match Michael Porter's achievements, combining intellectual vigor and empire building zeal. He lists his most meaningful achievement as "finding a group of people crazy enough and who care enough to start company committed to upsizing rather than downsizing". Perhaps, but Hamel also brings aphoristic energy to the turgid world of management writing. Leading the Revolution includes such bon mots as "get off the treadmill of incrimination", "heretics not prophets create revolutions" and "You can't use an old map to find new land." Not Jane Austen.
Hamel is a visiting professor at Harvard Business School and London Business School. California-based Hamel is also a consultant to major companies and chairman of Strategos, a worldwide strategic consulting company. Strategos proclaims that it is "dedicated to helping its clients get to the future first". It runs the Strategos Institute - a "client-sponsored multi-disciplinary research program" - and the Strategos Practice - "a partner not a consulting company". The selling point is the quality of the ideas and access to big hitting intellectuals - its clients include Royal Dutch/Shell, Emerson Electric and Nokia.
Hamel argues that complacency and cynicism are endemic. "Dilbert is the bestselling business book of all time. It is cynical about management. Never has there been so much cynicism," he laments. "What we need is not visionaries but activists. We need antidotes to Dilbert."
W.Chan Kim and Renne Mauborgne: The Innovation Gurus
W.Chan Kim is The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD Business School, France. Renne Mauborgne is Distinguished Fellow and affiliate Professor of Strategy and Management, also at INSEAD.
Their publication, Blue Ocean Strategy (2005), is a summation of a decade of articles on value innovation, including one in the Harvard Business Review. Kim and Mauborgne have presented themselves as unashamed strategic iconoclasts. The thinking behind most business strategy sees the agents as either individual companies or industries as a whole. The scene for strategic activity is essentially fixed and finite. Analogies were often made with the field of battle or the theater of war. Some strategists went further in borrowing military symbols. They talked about headquarters rather than the corporate head office. The battlefield was fixed in area; no new land could be added to it or created. Any struggles that took place were zero-sum games. These conflicts were intense and bloody (in figurative terms), staining red the ground on which they were fought.
Anecdotal evidence pointed to a different, non-static commercial battlefield. Industries and businesses grow up, while others decay. Kim and Mauborgne established a historical database of businesses. This showed that very few of the industries in existence in the first decade of the twentieth century were still in the picture a century later. Their research also showed that new industries are being created at a phenomenal rate, far faster than even before. Where is the finite theater of battle, they ask? The world is not to be tapped. According to Kim and Mauborgne, there is a huge and underestimated capacity to create new industries. Most strategists seem, at best, ambivalent about this.
The successful industries of today were unheard of 30 years ago. A similar pattern can, with confidence, be projected into the future. The only certainty is that most industries are important at some time, but no industry remains great forever; the same can be said about companies. This demonstrates the unsuitability of companies and industries as subjects for strategic inquiry. These patterns have nothing to do with business cycles. “The moment you take an industry-deterministic view of your company you are a victim of that industry.”
There is no reason why, with a bold and creative approach, declines cannot be halted and turned around. What matters most are “smart strategic moves.” The most important of these is the creation and capturing of new market space. To return to the earlier analogy, new land is needed. This reclamation is affected by strategic moves. These are “the actions of players in conceiving, launching, and realizing business ideals.” Kim and Mauborgne give a number of examples. The introduction of the Model T by Ford in 1908 was a strategic move par excellence. It launched the American auto industry and catapulted Ford to a predominant market share. When, in 1924, General Motors launched its cars “for every purpose and every purse,” it knocked Ford out of the box, soon gaining a 50 percent market share. This was also a strategic move. It revitalized the auto industry. Both Ford and then GM achieved value innovation. The secret to success is realizing what are the smart and strategic moves. As the experience of Ford and many others shows, strategic moves can and often are copied eventually. Those seeking azure-blue seas must be aware that, sooner or later, they will be dyed blood red as the forces of corporate competition take them over.
While that may be inevitable, it should not stop the search for value innovation. What Kim and Mauborgne are telling business is to forget about the old stresses. Don’t try fighting in territory that is contested; find a new market. Stop worrying about the competition – make it irrelevant. This way it is possible to offer lower prices and a differentiated product or service.
Value innovation is a function of strategy. Another important notion of contemporary business is “fair process.” This is a vital part of successful management. It involves recognition of employees through engagement. Its aim is to gain the emotional and intellectual commitment of employees who are a company’s single greatest asset.
This special series is presented by India's leading management portal MBAUniverse.com in tie-up with UK based Thinkers 50. Thinkers 50, produced by UK based management experts Des Dearlove & Stuart Crainer of Suntop Media, is a bi-annual guide to which thinkers and ideas are most influential in today's times. ( www.thinkers50.com )Watch this space for profiles of other thought-leaders from the list.
