STRATEGY-7 What if the Window Of Opportunity Closes?

Key idea: be proactive

The last several articles have focused on Windows of Opportunity (WOO).? The articles focused on how market, technological, political, and disasters create WOO.

What the different types of WOO have in common is RECOGNITION.? Recognizing gigantic shifts in the world so that we can develop a strategy to take advantage of them. In this article we will consider the opposite idea.?

What if we are riding the WOO wave and it comes to a screeching halt?

The other day I sat in a webinar listening to Jason Fiefer give a key note speech about change. He told a story that made me pause.

Dogfish brewery out of Delaware created a 9% IPA beer. It was a huge hit.? ?BUT 9% is a very strong beer.? Most beers are around 4%.

A distributor suggested that Dogfish create a 6% IPA beer.? Dogfish did.? It was a huge success.? It became 75% of their business.?

What would you do next?

Most companies would produce less than 6% IPA beer.? This is incremental improvement and very typical of most companies' way of doing business.

BUT Dogfish realized it had a problem.? What if IPA beers fall out of favor?? If everything they make is IPA then they would be out of business when the change happens.

AND change always happens...

Dogfish leadership decided to limit the 6% beer to no more than 50% of the business and start nudging their customers to new different types of beers.??

In other words, they became an innovator again instead of incremental improver. Most successful companies love to tweak and slightly improve existing products and stop innovating.

Ultimate Dogfish was sold to a bigger player for 350M+ in 2019.

I love this story.? ?It tells of a company recognizing a WOO, riding it, BUT eventually being strategic enough to realize that the wave might crash.?

All ideas eventually become outdated.? All businesses become dusty.? As leaders, we need to keep innovating in order to keep riding the current and next wave.?

Today while searching for the name of the company, I saw a story (reference 2) that the new owners have produced a 3% IPA. This is the incremental change that most large businesses fall in love with. The will to win reduces with size and self-protection takes over. No one will get fired for bringing forth a 3% IPA.

Strategic Transformation:

1. What product or service that you are offering that makes up more than 50% of your business, should be capped?
2. What new products can you offer to replace the key products?
3. What new market can you attack?

Resources:

1. https://www.delawarebusinessnow.com/news/dining/acquisition-of-dogfish-head-by-brewer-of-sam-adams-now-official/article_1e055fba-fa2c-51f8-aa7a-b449a087150d.html
2. https://www.delawareonline.com/story/life/food/2025/01/11/dogfish-head-brewery-new-30-minute-light-ipa-beer-lower-calories-fewer-carbs/77593398007/