Five Future Strategies You Need Right Now

It's easy to miss many innovations in strategy until they appear on the front page of a major business publication. But by then everyone--including all your competitors--is using them.

As a CEO or senior executive, your job is to detect these strategies?and implement them--before your competitors.

That's where this book comes in.

Author George Stalk has often been called a guru of business strategy. In the 1980s, before anyone else saw its importance, he and his colleagues at The Boston Consulting Group developed the concept of time-based competition: how meeting the needs of your customers faster than your competitors can give you an unassailable advantage.

In this Memo to the CEO, Stalk discusses five strategies that have not yet become widely practiced but are nonetheless worthy of your attention now. He offers advice on how to identify and manage them while they still present opportunities to jump ahead of the competition. They are:

Addressing supply chain deficiencies

One example of a supply chain crisis is the growing lack of West Coast port capacity. Stalk reviews the strategic implications of this problem, reveals its impact, and recommends specific courses of action.

Sidestepping economies of scale

Many business leaders are reexamining their assumptions about the benefits of scale. Scaling down, not up, and building "disposable factories" and even "disposable strategies" are becoming new keys to lowering costs and boosting performance.

Profiting from dynamic pricing

Today, using real-time data, it is increasingly possible to match the price of your product or service with the immediate, second-by-second needs of the customer.

Embracing complexity

Simplicity is the mantra of the day. But with examples from a few leading-edge companies, Stalk shows that embracing complexity can achieve competitive advantage.

Utilizing infinite bandwidth

In a world of infinite bandwidth, companies that know how to take advantage of it