When the changes in the market almost make you blind - What are the theories and strategies that do not leave us behind

Dear blogreader,

The Olympics are over and we are now back into the normal mode where some sports analogies spill over into strategic business challenges

• "Skating where the puck is", i.e. finding the fundamentals around which you can build future business strategies.
• "Hockey stick growth", i.e. Validating growth plans that have hockey stick patterns, and make sure that the investment period is short and the revenue growth is high rather than the other way around.

It used to be easy with straightforward business plans in 10 simple steps. But with the large changes that the Broadband/IT/globalized economy has caused, these methods does not represent a big enough toolbox. So where could I turn to get some theories that are proven to really work in the field and that are simple enough so that I could use them in daily strategic planning work.

1. In the late nineties we did we all went down the search for bowling alleys in order to find sailing winds inside the Tornados just to figure out that we are know back to dealing with Darwin and build from our roots.
2. Staying closer to our roots have made it important to enhancing Profits from the core and to search for growth by expanding Beyond the Core.
3. We also learnt that the discipline of market leaders and the new market leaders is about making choices and realizing that there is few basic roles you can play in a given market.
4. We also learnt that the knee of the hockey stick need to be clearly defined as the inflection point, that is fundamental to understand the likelihood for any growth scenario to occur.
5. Information is is optional but insights are mandatory. When reinventing strategy a model for how to capture the key insights, and how they relate to the insights that applied before, could come in handy
6. The power of your insights and ideas and the ability to quickly make the point is becoming increasingly important. You are often down to making your point on the back of the napkin and having to say it with charts that is appealing to executives

If you do not have the tiome to read books shorts cuts like Soundview and Learn out loud might come in handy.

With these book suggestions I hope that you can secure that your business challenges are prevented from ending up with a Business looking like this ...