Archive for the ‘Competitive Advantage’ Category
Like most industries, the manufacturing sector is transforming rapidly. Because of recent technological advances and globalization, U.S. manufacturing is facing intense international competition, increasing market volatility and complexity, a declining workforce, and a host of other challenges. Yet we know that in order to have a strong economy, we need a strong manufacturing base. So what’s the answer?
Today’s manufacturers must transform along with the rest of the world by adopting six advanced Next Generation Manufacturing principles. They are:
- Anticipate customer needs: Look at your customers’ future and focus on what you DO know rather than what you don’t know. Ask, “What are the hard trends, the things that will happen, versus the things that might happen? What are the industries that are converging around our customers that our customers currently don’t see?” Then you can start seeing both needs and opportunities before they happen.
- Innovate around the core: What are your core competencies? Are you still using your core competencies? In the past, manufacturers could go decades between innovations. That strategy doesn’t work anymore. Today you cannot just innovate now and then: to survive and thrive in a time of vertical change, you have to be innovating around your core competencies continuously. So what is your core, and are you using it?
Continue reading ‘How to Save the Manufacturing Sector’ »
Posted in Anticipating the future, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Cyclical and Permanent Change, Economy, Innovation. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Flash Foresight, Futurist, Innovation, Manufacturing, Success, tech jobs, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
There are lots of great business books out there but, as a small-business owner, you may not have time to read them all. Luckily, we were able to get some of the country’s best business writers to distill their business theories into one short and sweet New Year’s resolution for you. Even if you only pick one or two, you’ll be on the road to building your business in 2012.
Stay current on transformative trends. Based on 28 years of research and analysis of current hard trends, it’s evident that the next five years will usher in the biggest technological transformation in human history, transforming how we sell, market, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train, educate and research. We are entering the era of “big data, meaning anyone can access data streams and analyze them using a smart phone or tablet. For example, Wall Street is now mining Tweets to determine mood and sentiment among the public. As technology progresses, it will be more common for people and companies to have moment-by-moment data for a variety of uses that will give us intelligence and help us learn about, react to and anticipate changes that are happening globally. – Daniel Burrus, “Flash Foresight”(HarperBusiness, 2011)
Read the Other Authors’ >
Posted in Anticipating the future, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight, Planning. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Flash Foresight, Futurist, Innovation, Matt Brownell, New Years Resolutions, Success, tech jobs, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
By Kim S. Nash
Originally Published December 16, 2011
What’s wrong with how most companies create a business strategy?
C-suites spend a lot of time focusing on execution. The problem is they may not be executing on a full strategy. Too often, a strategic plan is a static document. We have a meeting and write it up, including objectives, goals, time lines and accountability. But then it’s fixed in time until the next time we have a strategic planning session and come up with a new one. We need to make the strategic plan alive in the minds of our people.
If you ask somebody, “What’s your strategic plan?” we don’t want them to say, “Just a minute. I’ll find it on my computer.” That means they’re not living it.
Traditional strategy focuses on scenario planning. “If this happens, we’ll do that.” But people fail to realize there are two types of trends: hard and soft. Hard trends will happen. Soft trends might happen.
What’s a hard trend?
A hard trend is going to happen whether you like it or not. There are three prime drivers of hard trends: technology, demographics and government regulation. When there’s a law passed, pay attention. It’s loaded with hard trends that give you amazing opportunities if you pay attention. Will we be able to use cell phones and tablets to tap into a Watson-like supercomputer? Yes. Will we be able to use mobile devices to tap into logistics and supply chain systems? Yes. So why are you waiting?
Continue reading ‘How to Avoid Future Shock’ »
Posted in Anticipating the future, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Flash Foresight, Futurist, Innovation, Success, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
Originally published on ChiefExecutive.net December 9, 2011.
Chances are your company is one of the many taking a “wait and see” approach to one or more business issues right now. The approach plays out like this:
• “Should we redo our website? Let’s wait and see what the competitors do.”
• “Should we expand into a new market? Let’s wait and see what the economy does.”
• “Should we invest in cloud technologies to increase the speed and agility of the organization? Let’s wait and see what new innovations will be released.”
On the surface, taking a “wait and see” approach seems to make sense. After all, we’re dealing with a U.S. and global economy that’s filled with uncertainties. We’re hearing news reports that predict a long and drawn out recovery. We’re witnessing not just rapid technological changes, but major transformations on so many levels. So “waiting and seeing” what happens certainly seems less risky.
In reality, a “wait and see” approach has much more risk than the action being avoided. Here’s why. In the past, when we were going through rapid change (not massive transformation like we’re seeing today), a company could use a “wait and see” approach because it was harder for competitors to develop and deploy new offerings quickly, and it was harder for established competitors to change the game or redefine completely. None of that is difficult anymore.
Today, new competitors can emerge rapidly, and they can even be from another part of the world. Geography is increasingly less of a hindrance. Anyone, at any time, can quickly become more relevant than you because the barriers to entry are low and the ability to scale is fast. Therefore, in a world were the game is changing rapidly, failing to take action—deciding to “wait and see”—can quickly put you on a path of increasing irrelevancy or a rapid demise.
Additionally, with many adopting a “wait and see” approach, the pace of recovery will be very slow indeed.
Continue reading ‘The High Risk of a ‘Wait and See’ Approach’ »
Posted in Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Flash Foresight, Futurist, Innovation, Success, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
By Daniel Burrus and John David Mann
Kids these days … all the time they spend plugged in to all those video games. Isn’t it terrible?
Or is it?
While many parents and teachers lament over what a waste of time video games are, they are walking past a historic opportunity. The only thing being wasted here is the true value and potential of these technological marvels. Instead of decrying them, we could be using these high-tech “toys” to create a revolution in education and training.
“Kids these days, they have no attention span….” Oh no? These games take our kids into a highly immersive, interspatial, 3D world where they learn how to operate a breathtaking range of tools, including futuristic vehicles, complex weapons, and other machines. Take a few minutes to really watch them in one of these games. They pour hours into memorizing elaborate scenarios and developing the most sophisticated strategies and tactics to accomplish goals and win the game.
And they don’t do all this alone. Often you’ll find them wearing a headset, collaborating with teammates from all over the world, sometimes even using cordoned off sections of the screen to videoconference so they can collaborate face-to-face in complex real-time solutions.
How often do you do that with your colleagues?
Continue reading ‘An Education Revolution: Automate and Humanize!’ »
Posted in Anticipating the future, Competitive Advantage, Future Tech, Innovation, Perspectives. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Flash Foresight, Futurist, Innovation, Occupy Wall Street, Social Media, social media revolution, Success, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could predict the future—and be right?” writes Daniel Burrus. “You can: all you have to do is leave out the parts you could be wrong about!
This Soundview Live webinar, How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible, looks at how Burrus’s seven radical Flash Foresight “triggers” have transformed dozens of careers, fortunes, and lives. These principles provide an easy-to-implement blueprint for applying the same strategies to your own business, revealing hidden opportunities and allowing you to solve your biggest problems—before they happen.
Title: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible
Date: November 15th, 2011
Time: 12:00 p.m. EST
Registration Link**: https://soundview.ilinc.com/register/vfhffvp
**Registration is free if you choose “Burrus.com Promo” or “FlashForesight.com” in the “How You Heard About The Event” section when registering.**
Who should attend:
Any business strategist, company leader or consultant trying to determine what the future holds for business opportunities.
You will learn:
• How seven valuable principles can help you find deep business insights.
• How to change the way you think about your current obstacles and open your mind to limitless new opportunities.
• How to stimulate innovations and positive change.
• What you need to do to survive and thrive in the challenging times that lie ahead.
How does a Soundview Live event work?
A Soundview Live event is an interactive conversation, where business experts are engaged in dialogue with Soundview’s editors and listeners around their subject of expertise. Questions are encouraged and listeners are guaranteed to come away with clear business principles they can apply to their own company and career.
Posted in Anticipating the future, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight, Innovation, Webinar. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Flash Foresight, Futurist, Innovation, Occupy Wall Street, Social Media, social media revolution, Success, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
By Daniel Burrus and John David Mann
Two questions. First: Are you busier now than you were a year ago? You don’t even need to check your calendar: a quick gut check tells you the answer. Sure you are. Every month seems to go by faster than the last.
And second: In the five years before GM went bankrupt, were the top five executives busy every day? Sure they were. We all are. But being busy certainly didn’t help them, and it won’t help you either.
It’s a fact of life in the twenty-first century: we’re all very busy. Unfortunately, it is possible to busy yourself right out of business. Blockbuster, Chrysler, Polaroid, Borders … the list is long.
Being busy won’t help today because we’re in a time of transformational change, and all business processes are transforming before our eyes. Spending your time putting out fires and managing the crisis of the day won’t work anymore, because the biggest problems you need to solve are the ones that haven’t happened yet. And the biggest opportunities you face are the ones that are coming tomorrow, next week, next year.
IBM says 40 percent of their profitability today comes from products that were impossible four years ago. For Apple, it’s 70 percent. And the pace of innovation is still accelerating. That means the majority of the answers you’ll need to be implementing four years from now reside in products or services that are not clamoring for your attention today—and that you need to start seeing NOW.
Being busy won’t help. You need to start being anticipatory: solving tomorrow’s problems and seeing tomorrow’s opportunities today.
Continue reading ‘We’re All Too Busy … Missing Amazing Opportunities’ »
Posted in Anticipating the future, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight, Innovation, Planning. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Flash Foresight, Futurist, Innovation, Success, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
Day 5 of my guest blog series on WIRED Magazine’s Change Accelerators Blog sponsored by BMW.
Accelerating transformation makes continuous reinvention imperative.
Everything we’ve talked about this week boils down to this fact of contemporary life: Geometric increases in processing power, bandwidth, and digital storage are driving a curve of technological change that has reached escape velocity. Those three hard trends of digital change are what lie behind today’s blisteringly rapid avalanche of commercial, economic, social, and global transformations.
Change is now accelerating so fast that it’s changing all the tools and all the rules.
If you’ve been following this blog all week, you’ve probably had this thought: “So is this all purely a function of technology?” Yes and no. Because there’s something behind those technological events: the human mind.
Our tools are an expression of our thoughts. The fact is, the continuing geometric increase in human knowledge and communication is one of those hard trends that is linear in direction: it is progressive, not cyclical. It continues to flow, and never ebbs. As Buckminster Fuller was fond of saying, “You can never learn less; you can only learn more.”
Today information and new knowledge travel around the world at the speed of light. Which means that technological innovation proceeds at close to the speed of thought.
This puts us face to face with what I call the reinvention imperative.
Transformation will happen, whether you want it to or not: it’s a hard trend. The work you do, your business, your field, your career, everything will be completely and profoundly affected by it. How this affects you will depend on how you respond—or react.
Posted in Anticipating the future, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight, Innovation. Tags: BMW, Business, Business Trends, Change Accelerators Blog, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Facebook, Facebook new internet, Flash Foresight, Futurist, new internet, Social Media, social media trends, Success, tech trends, Trends, Wired Magazine. No Comments »
Day 4 of my guest blog series on WIRED Magazine’s Change Accelerators Blog sponsored by BMW.
I want you to do an exercise with me. Close your eyes to the distractions around you and ask yourself, “In my work, what is the biggest problem I’m facing right now?” and don’t open them again till you have your answer.
There. Got it? Okay, here’s the exercise: with that big problem firmly in mind, I want you to take that problem…and skip it.
Don’t bother trying to solve it. It’s not your real problem anyway. And even if it was, it’s not anymore.
Yesterday I mentioned HP’s failed TouchPad, and how it was a shining example of a company being willing to fail fast. It’s also an excellent example of this exercise. The TouchPad was a big problem. A billion-dollar problem. HP expected it to be a hit—it could do multi-tasking (Apple’s iPad couldn’t) and had all kinds of features from its Palm OS that had been a hit on the Palm Pre. But it flopped.
Big problem. HP didn’t even try to solve it. Instead, they skipped it.
This is a strategy I use with clients constantly, and it gets powerful results. It’s not a philosophy of denial, avoidance, or procrastination. Skipping your biggest problem means stepping outside the flat plane of the existing situation and gaining a clearer perspective, which often triggers flash foresights that lead to new opportunities far bigger and more productive than you could have imagined based on the original (incorrect) problem you were trying to solve.
Skipping the problem gives you permission to escape the prevailing paradigm, which typically includes existing tools, systems, and processes that may be dragging you down.
Often, it’s the curse of the legacy system: it works too well to throw it away, but not well enough to move you forward. It is an anchor, holding you back as you strive to push your way into the 21st century.
Posted in Anticipating the future, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight. Tags: BMW, Business, Business Trends, Change Accelerators Blog, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Facebook, Facebook new internet, Flash Foresight, Futurist, new internet, Social Media, social media trends, Success, tech trends, Trends, Wired Magazine. No Comments »
Day 3 of my guest blog series on WIRED Magazine’s Change Accelerators Blog sponsored by BMW.
Accelerated change necessitates faster failing, faster learning, faster regrouping.
We’re living in an environment of unprecedented transformation. The rate of technological change has accelerated the everyday flux of innovation, obsolescence, and re-innovation to a point where all the rules are changing. And tomorrow they will be changing still faster.
This can sound terrifying, I know. But in fact, there are some exhilarating and exciting implications. For example, who is better positioned for economic success right now, the United States or China? Be careful. It’s a trick question.
Oracle, IBM, Google, SAP, all big companies, all giants. (Fill in the blanks for your particular field. NBC-CBS-ABC. GM-Ford. EMI-SonyBMG-Universal-Warner.) We think they have an advantage over smaller companies, because they have market share, economies of scale, and momentum on their side.
Not true. Accelerate the rate of change, and pretty soon size no longer matters. What matters now is velocity.
It used to be, the big ate the small. Not anymore. Now the fast eat the slow.
Today new competitors can emerge rapidly, even from completely different parts of the globe. The barriers to entry are absurdly low, the ability to scale equally fast. Anyone, anytime, can quickly become more relevant than you.
And this has created a new relationship with failure.
Our instinct is to avoid failure, or try to. The specter of failure makes us risk-averse. But today, a wait-and-see, let’s-ride-it-out approach to strategy is suicide. Wait and see used to equal “playing it safe.” Today it’s the opposite. Motorola, Kodak, and Polaroid saw the advent of digital, treated it as a soft trend, and all played wait-and-see. The major record labels played wait-and-see with MP3 audio.
Posted in Anticipating the future, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight, Innovation. Tags: BMW, Business, Business Trends, Change Accelerators Blog, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Facebook, Facebook new internet, Flash Foresight, Futurist, new internet, Social Media, social media trends, Success, tech trends, Trends, Wired Magazine. No Comments »
Day 2 of my guest blog series on WIRED Magazine’s Change Accelerators Blog sponsored by BMW.
Talking with IBM executives recently, and they said something fascinating: 40 percent of their profitability today comes from products that were impossible four years ago. And that percentage is going up.
At Apple it already has: As of third quarter 2011, 70 percent of their revenue derives from two products that were impossible four years ago. (70 percent and climbing.)
Yesterday I wrote about the power of certainty. Here is something we can know with certainty: Most of the best, most productive, most effective, most profitable stuff we’ll be buying, selling, and using in 2015 is impossible today. (That is exactly the stuff you need to be focusing on today.)
What makes this a certainty is three hard (i.e., factual, not just possible) trends of digital acceleration. These three trends are driving such a profound acceleration of change that change itself has changed and become a rushing current of transformation.
Transformation is more than simply faster change. Change is doing something in an incrementally different way. Transformation is doing something so drastically different that it becomes a qualitative shift, and not just quantitative. The move from wax cylinders, to acetate discs, to LPs, to CDs…these were all change. CDs to MP3s? Suddenly I can carry my entire music library in my shirt pocket, and my digital music player (which also happens to be my smartphone) has no moving parts, unless you count electrons. That’s a transformation.
Posted in Anticipating the future, Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight, Innovation, Trends. Tags: BMW, Business, Business Trends, Change Accelerators Blog, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Facebook, Facebook new internet, Flash Foresight, Futurist, new internet, Social Media, social media trends, Success, tech trends, Trends, Wired Magazine. No Comments »
By Daniel Burrus, Special for US Daily Review
A recent Forbes magazine article listed some of the most profitable businesses in America, and many of them were (surprisingly) restaurants. In fact, two of restaurants noted had four-year growth rates of over 120%. The four-year growth rate is important, because it includes the recession, meaning that these restaurants are growing even during hard economic times.
How is a business that provides a non-essential service (eating out) doing well in a time when people are being more conservative with their spending? Because rather than competing with other restaurants, they are redefining their competitive position, anticipating trends, and finding new and growing niches.
Specialty retailers can learn a lot from these restaurants and can apply the successful strategies they are using to their own business.
There are many ways to compete, yet most companies tend to compete on price. However, the more you compete on price, the lower your margins, meaning you need high volume to make up for it. If your intent is to be a competitor of price, then fine. Just realize you have many more options. The restaurant Buffalo Wild Wings decided to compete in areas other than price and are experiencing a 121% growth rate because of it.
If you go to the restaurant’s web site, you’ll see a very atypical site complete with avatars and animated graphics. It even challenges visitors to play some computer games. It’s fun and sells the experience of patronizing the restaurant to their targeted demographic. The restaurant chain realized that people flock to places that deliver an experience, so that’s their competitive advantage, not price.
In addition to competing on price, you can also compete on time, reputation, values, technology, image, experience, service, design, innovation, quality, information, knowledge, consultative value, loyalty, and process. To get away from competing on price, ask yourself, “Do I have a strategy for every one of those different ways of competing?” Most companies compete in only one or two areas and have a detailed strategy for both. But few compete in all areas. Therefore, to gain an advantage, detail how you are different in each area so you can go beyond competing and accelerate growth.
Continue reading ‘How Specialty Product Retailers Can Accelerate Growth’ »
Posted in Competitive Advantage, Flash Foresight, Planning, Trends. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Facebook, Facebook new internet, Flash Foresight, Futurist, new internet, Social Media, social media trends, Success, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
By Lemuel Cacho
After the United States ranked 5th in a recent World Economic Forum survey, many people, especially Americans are worried whether they can get back on track and become competitive once more. Daniel Burrus thinks so and all we need is a flash foresight.
According to Burrus, flash foresight is a sudden burst of insight about the future that produces a new and radically different way of doing something that will open up invisible opportunities and solve seemingly impossible problems often before they happen.
“Government, business and education, not to mention millions of individuals in all professions, are faced with an increasingly uncertain future as they try to solve a growing list of seemingly impossible problems,” says Burrus. “Flash foresight is a sudden grasp of a future certainty, opening up heretofore invisible opportunities and seeing solutions to seemingly impossible problems.”
Continue reading ‘Can Flash Foresight Help US Regain Economic Competitiveness?’ »
Posted in Competitive Advantage, Economy, Flash Foresight. Tags: Business, Business Trends, Dan Burrus, Daniel Burrus, empowerment, Flash Foresight, Futurist, Success, tech trends, Trends. No Comments »
