Business strategies are constantly evolving. Technology has opened possibilities to share information and develop businesses. Here, we take a look at successful strategies that are becoming popular but are not yet mainstream - as well as one that needs adjustment!
Today’s conventional business strategies were radical at one time. Remote work, for example, was mostly for individual specialists in 2015. Post-COVID, the situation is very different. Some strategies become famous and only then get copied, others fit specific industries. Still others reflect a culture, like flat management coming from Scandinavia.
We looked at the business strategies that have helped companies innovate, and that help differentiate companies. Some of them will become one of several normal ways to go about a business strategy; others will remain a niche solution.
Crowdsourcing Innovation
If your company has a marketing strategy that is strong on customer inputs, crowdsourcing innovation can work for you. Consider LEGO, which has developed a platform for bringing in customer ideas and designs. LEGO Ideas provides a way for people to submit a design for a new LEGO figure. The figure needs to be supported by a minimum number of people to be produced. The designer will certainly drum up that support, which results in free marketing for LEGO and a new product that should do well as the customer base is already looking to buy it.
Radical Transparency
The idea of being ‘radically’ transparent came in part from the world of IT, where non-relational databases and data pools made it possible for companies to start sharing information in new ways. Publishing platform Medium gives a lot of data regarding text performance, such as views, reads, and engagement metrics. The company is also open about its revenue sharing with writers. Whole Foods provides detailed information regarding product sources, quality, and their impact on the environment.
Flat company organization
Flat organizations used to be a niche model found in Scandinavian tech companies. It has become a favorite model for the IT industry in particular. There is more to it than not being beaten by a whip-wielding boss; personal responsibility runs high in a flat organization. This extends to pointing out issues and possible solutions. Done well, this model incorporates frequent, low-level recognition for jobs well done or for realized ideas. Everyone is expected to speak up, agree on the direction to take, and contribute to a try-and-try-again environment. Steam, based not far from Microsoft in Bellevue, Washington, is the darling of the flat organization world, with employees deciding for themselves what they work on.
Success through failure
Turning up the maxim ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again’ to 11 gets you to the success through failure model made famous by SpaceX. Iterative design improvements in an environment where questions can’t be answered for sure until you try can take a lot of patience, especially on the part of investors. A well-advertised high tolerance for failed attempts (as opposed to tolerating failure due to inaction) does need to be coupled with a demonstrative ability to learn from mistakes – otherwise, instead of SpaceX, you have the now-defunct Virgin Orbit.
Gamification
The opposite of flat management is not necessarily a top-down model. Gamification works well in some cultures for both customers and employees. Duolingo, for example, uses gamification as a way of maintaining the frequency of user interaction. Language learning works best with daily practice, so badges, rankings, and levels help keep the user interested. Whereas flat organizations emphasize equality and everyone pulling their weight, gamification works on the premise that competitiveness is personal and that people are willing to work harder and smarter if an individual reward is in sight.
Collaborating with other companies
Partnerships are becoming more common every day. The days where an aircraft manufacturer such as Boeing would listen to the needs of a client when designing an airplane are still here. Increasingly, companies would rather take the route of a joint venture in cases where the inputs from both sides are significant. Even more complicated forms of cooperation can be seen in very high tech fields where companies with certain expertise or components are brought into a consortium instead of being a supplier. Continuing with the aviation theme, airlines band together to take advantage of scale, unique routes and ensuring higher occupancy. For example, the Star Alliance encompasses 26 airlines, including Air Canada, Lufthansa, SAS, and United Airlines.
We have barely scratched the surface of innovation in the corporate world. We also have not touched on the risks that any business strategy carries. Cooperation with companies and individuals – such as in open-source software development – is changing as the world’s geopolitical stage fragments. Recent findings that open source, long considered a safe way to develop because of the oversight of the crowd – is as fraught with danger as security professionals had long maintained. How users of a particular strategy react to shocks to their system is ample material for another article!
