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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

Innovation

10 Most Competitive Tech Companies in the World

Download our full white paper report here: Outthinker 10 Technology March 2014 At Outthinker we follow Chicago University Professor Michael Csikszentmihalyi’s distinction of there being two

Marketing and sales

Two Critical Aspects to Innovating Your Business Model

Call me crazy for asking, but is business model innovation really anything new? Hasn’t it always been that those willing to explore creative ways to

Leadership

What we Love on the Web Today: Scaling Up is Much Harder than Starting Up

Our friend Verne Harnish, author of “The Rockefeller Habits,” shared this Economist article with us today. Daniel Isenberg, of Babson Executive Education, takes issue with

Career

Our favorite from the web today: 21 CEOs Share their Favorite Books

Business Insider shares the favorite of 21 CEOs including Tom Cook, Jeff Bezos, Tony Hsieh, and Richard Branson. This is reading list worth considering.

Marketing and sales

4 Lessons in Building a Brand

Love it or hate it, your success this year and beyond depends on your ability to shape a brand: your career’s, product’s, department’s, or company’s.

Strategic thinking

5 Ways to Reframe your Thinking to be More Like Elon Musk

Drawing parallels between Elon Musk and Steve Jobs is irresistible, but how do big thinkers like them come up with their innovative ideas and how

Leadership

Great Companies Solve Problems that Matter

The age of judging companies only on their longevity is now past. Great companies solve problem that matter. Since the 1950s we have been judging

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?