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Outthinker Blog

The Outthinker blog offers our take on the latest news stories, trends, and ideas in strategy. Learn real-world examples of the Outthinker strategic process along with suggestions on how to apply them to your business

Strategy

Outthinker’s 2022 Strategic Summer Reading List

Summer starts this week, at least for those Outthinkers north of the equator. If you’re anything like our team, you’ve spent the last few months

Innovation

Will Web3 Make Us All “Prosumers”?

Like many inventors, Cleveland resident Charles Brush was ahead of his time. By 1888, he had constructed a 144-blade windmill in his backyard that powered

Innovation

Channel 13 and the Vocabulary of Web3

Why Billy Joel confuses my kids … A few weeks ago, my wife and I took the kids to see Billy Joel at an arena

People

Elon Musk Bans Remote Work: The Outthinker Perspective

Earlier this week, Bloomberg confirmed news of an email to all Tesla employees. The message, sent by CEO Elon Musk, demands that everyone at Tesla is

Strategy

Four Principles for Competing within Ecosystems

The most central question for any business today may be the following: “To what extent does delivering value to your end-user involve the collaboration of

Innovation

Language That Unleashes Innovation: 4 Steps

Last week, the Outthinker Strategy Network (OSN) hosted our first in-person roundtable of the year at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

Strategy

70 Ways to Transform Your Culture

How can you shift your organization’s culture? This is a critical question to answer if you want to survive and evolve as a company.

proximity

Proximity Powers the Future of Work

Has COVID pushed us toward a new era of work? Of all the painful effects of it, might it push us to a world in

Strategy

Your Company as an Ecosystem

You can always feel the difference between city streets that were designed from the bottom up versus the top down. For example, when I visited

Strategy

Netflix Drop: The Downside of Platform Models

This week, Netflix shares plunged 35% in a single day after Tuesday’s report that the company lost subscribers for the first time since 2011. Overall,

Strategy

FLOOW2 Creates a Collaborative Ecosystem for Dutch Healthcare

One of my favorite things about the work I do is having the opportunity to interact with companies in so many different industries. Last week,

Strategy

Was ‘The Slap’ the Right Move? Three Alternative Strategic Plays

It’s safe to say most of us have seen it by now. Even if you missed the Academy Awards this year, you’ve likely watched the

Strategy

The Theory of the Firm: Will Individual Companies Exist 50 Years From Now?

Why do companies exist? British economist Ronald Coase’s 1937 Theory of the Firm tells us that the existence of a firm is necessary when the

proximity

How We Power: Trends & Challenges in the Energy Industry

Across many industries, the pandemic whisked the world along in an upheaval of transition. Ready or not, digital transformation pointed the way to survive, if

Strategy

Switch Your Ecosystem

For an organization, selecting which business ecosystem to participate in carries weighty consequences. It can shape the core of your identity and lead to a

Leverage Point	“8Ps” of Strategy	Opportunity for Disruption	Recommended Leverage Points
Position	- The farmers, individual and corporate, that you are targeting. - The need of the agricultural industry that you seek to fill.	3	- What technologies do you control that can help you tap into market segments that you previously thought unreachable? - What are the potential business alliances you could think about with key players in the segment to serve your customers with integrated solutions? (Serving customers with more integrated solutions example: serving farmers with fertilizers, crop protection and other).
Product	- The products you offer, and the characteristics that affect their value to customers. - The technology you develop for producing those products.	8	- What moves are your organization taking to implement Big Data and analytics to your operations? What IoT and blockchain applications can you use? - What tools and technology could you utilize or develop to improve food quality, traceability, and production? - How can you develop a more sustainable production model to accommodate constraints on arable land? - What is the future business model needed to serve new differentiated products to your customers?
Promotion	- How you connect with farmers and consumers across a variety of locations and industries. - How to make consumers, producers, and other stakeholders aware of your products and services.	8	- How are you connecting your product with individual and corporate farms who could utilize it? - How could you anticipate market and customer needs to make customers interested in accessing your differentiated products?
Price	How consumers and other members of the agricultural supply chain pay for access to agricultural products.	7	- What elements of value comprise your pricing? How do each of those elements satisfy the varying needs of your customers?
Placement	- How food products reach consumers. How the technologies, data, and services reach stakeholders in the supply chain.	9	- What new paths might exist for helping consumers access the food they desire? - How are you adapting your operations and supply chain to accommodate consumers’ desire for proximity to the food they eat? - How could you anticipate customer expectation to make products more accessible to customers/agile supply chain? - Have you considered urbanization as a part of your growth strategy?
Physical Experience	- How your food satisfies the needs and desires of your customer. - How the services you provide to agribusiness fulfill their needs.	9	- Where does your food rate on a taste, appearance, and freshness scale? - Could the services you provide to companies and farms in the agriculture industry be expanded to meet more needs? - What senses does your food affect besides hunger? How does your customer extract value from your food in addition to consumption?
Processes	- Guiding your food production operations in a manner cognizant of social pressure.	8	- How can you manage the supply chain differently to improve traceability and reduce waste? - How can you innovate systems in production, processing, storing, shipping, retailing, etc.? - What are new capabilities to increase sustainability (impact on the environment, or ESG) components?
People	- The choices you make regarding hiring, organizing, and incentivizing your people and your culture.		- How are you leveraging the agricultural experience of your staff bottom-up to achieve your vision? - How do you anticipate new organizational capabilities needed to perform your future strategy (innovation, exponential technologies needed, agile customer relationship, innovative supply chain)? - How do you manage your talents to assure suitable development with exposure in the agrifood main challenges/allowing a more sustainable view of the opportunities/cross-sectors?
--	--	--	--

Leverage
Point

“8Ps” of Strategy

Opportunity
for Disruption

Recommended Leverage Points

Position

- The farmers, individual and corporate, that you are targeting.

- The need of the agricultural industry that you seek to fill.

- What technologies do you control that can help you tap into market
segments that you previously thought unreachable?

- What are the potential business alliances you could think about with key players in the segment to serve your customers with integrated solutions? (Serving customers with more integrated solutions example: serving farmers with fertilizers, crop protection and other).

Product

- The products you offer, and the characteristics that affect their value to customers.

- The technology you develop for producing those products.

- What moves are your organization taking to implement Big Data and analytics to your operations? What IoT and blockchain applications can you use?

- What tools and technology could you utilize or develop to improve food quality, traceability, and
production?

- How can you develop a more sustainable production model to accommodate constraints on arable
land?

- What is the future business model needed to serve new differentiated products to your customers?

Promotion

- How you connect with farmers and consumers across a variety of locations and industries.
- How to make consumers, producers, and other stakeholders aware of your products and services.

- How are you connecting your product with individual and corporate farms who could utilize it?
- How could you anticipate market and customer needs to make customers interested in accessing your differentiated products?

Price

How consumers and other members of the agricultural supply chain pay for access to agricultural products.

- What elements of value comprise your pricing? How do each of those elements satisfy the varying needs of your customers?

Placement

- How food products reach consumers. How the technologies, data, and services reach stakeholders in the supply chain.

- What new paths might exist for helping consumers access the food they desire?
- How are you adapting your operations and supply chain to accommodate consumers’ desire for proximity to the food they eat?
- How could you anticipate customer expectation to make products more
accessible to customers/agile supply chain?
- Have you considered urbanization as a part of your growth strategy?

Physical
Experience

- How your food satisfies the needs and desires of your customer.
- How the services you provide to agribusiness fulfill their needs.

- Where does your food rate on a taste, appearance, and freshness
scale?
- Could the services you provide to companies and farms in the agriculture industry be expanded to meet more needs?
- What senses does your food affect besides hunger? How does your
customer extract value from your food in addition to consumption?

Processes

- Guiding your food production operations in a manner cognizant of social pressure.

- How can you manage the supply chain differently to improve traceability and reduce waste?
- How can you innovate systems in production, processing, storing, shipping, retailing, etc.?
- What are new capabilities to increase sustainability (impact on the environment, or ESG) components?

People

- The choices you make regarding hiring, organizing, and incentivizing your people and your culture.

- How are you leveraging the agricultural experience of your staff bottom-up to achieve your vision?
- How do you anticipate new organizational capabilities needed to perform your future strategy (innovation, exponential technologies needed, agile customer relationship, innovative supply chain)?
- How do you manage your talents to assure suitable development with exposure in the agrifood main challenges/allowing a more sustainable view of the opportunities/cross-sectors?