Disruption: Are you hunter or the hunted? You are being tested NOW

Disruptive innovation is upon us, proven, valued and transformative, and like a hungry animal it will stop at nothing in its pursuit of opportunity.  Perhaps more obvious to some, will be synergies or opportunities sought from M&A, or else the ambition to build dynamic capabilities enabling agile go-to-market. Our gain or our loss is mostly due to factors within our control, such as how we adapt and innovate when called upon to do so.  

Our largest clients are, or will soon be, either winning or losing because of the effects of innovation in go-to-market. Competing with new entrants, or investing to be a new entrant in adjacent markets. Launching non-traditional offerings. Leveraging investment in disruptive innovations. In 40% of cases, failure to adapt to disruption will cause their demise, and the 60% that survive will be defined by their ability to execute and follow through maximally. 

Roy Joseph MD at Goldman Sachs speaks to AWS about their extraordinary decision to enter an adjacent market - a 150 year old firm becoming a disruptive new entrant. Within 12 months of entering personal banking (not possessing a branch presence), they had taken that market by surprise - gaining $2bn+ in loans business (sub-$30k per client).

Think about the impact experienced by incumbents in retail banking. Consider the importance to Goldman Sachs of getting that right first time, minimising time to market, and maximising positive impact. We see similar initiatives in technology media and telecoms, financial services, and in fact across market sectors. With that courage and optimism, consider how important it is that organisations succeed, and then continue to get it right.

I saw the need to preserve shareholder value while clients undertake investment programmes seeking breakthrough growth. Forecasts and valuations are often exaggerated on the basis of influential subjective opinions and ambitions, and mostly insufficient objective analysis. 

Today this is a key factor of corporate survival and as such it should be scrutinised as a specific audit obligation; to safeguard shareholder value. When underpinned by M&A transactions, experts need to know how to better assess and improve chances of success. Of course in strategy and consulting (my origin) growth stabilisation is becoming paramount.

In response to this need, I formed an approach that balances ambition with caution, protecting organisations against ill-conceived or poorly executed growth projects, while bolstering those with the fundamentals to succeed. Business Growth Mechanics? (BGM)

In real terms, Fortune 1000 companies experience 12 failures to every 1 go-to-market success. Often these have become executive ‘ego projects’. It’s estimated that lack of excellence in implementation, or else inability or unwillingness to ‘fail-fast’ on such initiatives, causes upwards of $36 billion in losses each year. To counter this, BGM is designed to stimulate the right opportunities, examine project and organisation readiness, formulate objective arguments for or against, or simply identifying areas for improvement. In certain cases, that will oppose corporate power bases who prefer not to be challenged. Naturally this could result in creative tension, which never the less is valuable to the business. 

As an assurance methodology BGM ensures there is a balance of power in companies. Fact-based reasoning removes subjectivity and overcomes executive limitations or failings, by offering evidence to support the assessor's judgement, and providing a sound basis for executive discussion and decisions. 

In transaction advisory this offers a structured approach for evaluating growth projections during due diligence, and for improving and accelerating the synergy opportunities arising from M&A investments. 

In strategic consultancy we may offer practical commercial and operational guidance on how to co-create with precision, prioritise investment, comparing options with a balanced scorecard, and accelerating delivery of outcomes as planned in go-to-market business cases.