The single biggest reason companies fail is they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be.
Interpretation
Companies often fail because they focus too much on current successes rather than exploring future possibilities.
This quote by Gary Hamel highlights a common pitfall in corporate strategy where organizations become overly focused on their existing products, markets, or technologies. By neglecting potential future opportunities and innovations, they risk stagnation and ultimately failure. It serves as a reminder that foresight and adaptability are crucial for long-term success in a rapidly changing business landscape.
In practice
In a business seminar discussing strategic planning.
The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors.
The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs.
To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.
If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.
It doesn't matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is - what matters is its relative 'share of customer value' in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value.
The only thing that can be safely predicted is that sometime soon your organization will be challenged to change in ways for which it has no precedent.
You say: "I'm a blue sky thinker." Investor thinks: "You have no business model, and you don't know how to ship."
Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.
The reality is the Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Lean startups waste less money, because they use a disciplined approach to testing new products and ideas.
The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.
Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.
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