Taking a peek at the future of competition

Consider a ‘small’ organisation spanning, say 40,000 people and 300 business units, all globally dispersed. There is no one CEO or board, but several, as is the case with the corporate headquarter, all virtually based. In fact, they are rather clustered. Business functions like HR and Finance are likely outsourced, so is manufacturing and logistics. The organisation is competing across several industries and sectors.

Every week, thousands of unique customer commitments (UCCs) are launched through joint or individual innovation programs by the organisation across the entire amount of business units.

Rigid terms like products and services are basically doomed obsolete, now using UCCs to serve customers as defined by the customers themselves, and as enabled by the organisation. An integrated component, UCCs also include tailor-made customer experiences, tying up a plethora of several other options. No UCCs are produced, if not on customer data.

Asset ownership is replaced with flexible access to resources. Efficiency turned intelligent, while economies of scale virtually vanished as an entry barrier, now depicted in management literature on 20th century industrial competition. Employees are hired as data or knowledge providers. Likewise, CEOs are named data or knowledge facilitators. Business units previously considered cost centres are now data centres, while knowledge centres are profit centres.

Most competitors run with the same characteristics, and may be smaller or larger. More interestingly, imagine an entirely new set of value disciplines. For example, ADK (applied data and knowledge), NIRC (network infrastructure and relations capability) and BMI (business model innovation), distinguishing players in the market, and how competitors are outpaced. In light of that, operational excellence, customer intimacy and product leadership are gradually eroded as key determinants and growingly seen to carry long gone inspirational value.

Also, competition patterns are defined from new criteria, e.g. dismantling discussions on large versus small-and-medium-sized enterprises relevant in the conventional sense, and reducing both Forbes and Fortune lists inhabited by less than five per cent of the known companies, leaving the rest reduced to nostalgia.

What you really should worry about is that your perception of market mechanisms and conditions for being around to influence them are in fact already up for a pivotal test. Hence, while I may be communicating an audacious vision of a future, it also scopes one such in which business beliefs on how to compete, profit and exist are relentlessly challenged by realities currently in the process of materialising.

While we might label that future Disruption 2.0, some explanation would seem appropriate.Thus, from a planning perspective it might make sense to consider adapting to a reality immediately facing and impacting your strategies, yet rapidly changing markets require management teams to consider more steps ahead.

Initially, and most prominently challenging the traditional perception of how value disciplines contribute to defining a company’s strategic intent, today’s application of the terms in staying competitive in your market may surely still prove valid. Yet, cost efficiency through—e.g. reuse of digital assets—is up for changing that picture. Therefore, in transforming to perceiving a replacing value discipline like ADK, cost efficiency should rather be seen how organisations best take advantage of the opportunity costs following from not being able to translate data into knowledge directly applicable for decisions. Big data is big costs, if not translated to promoting immediate business opportunities. From that perspective, innovation life cycles are extremely short lived, pushing organisations to perform constantly, and redefining approaches to integrate use of cost and profit across the organisation.

Same story more a less applies to the value discipline NIRC. While not specifically replacing any known value discipline, this capability demonstrates any organisation’s potential of creating synergy through networks and relations with other organisations. In turn, this allows for considerations with management on how to improve current capability potentials, including getting more customers. Be aware that I do not use the term ‘company’ or ‘enterprise’ in framing a particular business unit in the aforementioned context of a ‘small’ organisation.

Management teams in business units decide before strategically defining whether NIRC is a value discipline to pursue, which particular network to enrol. Also, do you enrol as a data centre or a knowledge centre (ADK)?

Finally, a value discipline like BMI frames a broader perception of the traditionally known product leadership. Thus, having already acknowledged that UCCs may likely replace products and services, and whilst also integrating a customer experience component, innovation through product leadership also overlaps customer intimacy.

In light of that, you are faced with the very fact that the pace required to satisfy your customers is accelerating at unseen levels compared to the present understanding. In turn, this also requires the organisation to consider how to push UCCs to other and maybe newer and broader segments by applying constantly innovative business models, leaving the potential of today’s speed in industrially competitive business platforms sadly outdated.

Next, in taking a closer look at how decisions and profitability materialise, the organisations being part of the network infrastructure are granted a certain level of empowerment, whilst also relinquishing levels of independence to the key knowledge centre, typically owned by the founder of the network. Power relations are broadly synchronised through interdependence between newcomer and the residing key knowledge centre. Network may have brands to distinguish one from another. Using that platform any organisation in the network may sell UCCs, either through the brand or using own brand.

One key point is that an organisation measured small in today’s terms may break with many of the curses tormenting management and employees, running with an appetite to conquer new markets and opportunities. Similarly, I acknowledge terms labelling employees ‘data/knowledge facilitators’ on the one side, and CEOs ‘data/knowledge providers’ on the other may at first seem far-fetched. Yet, it does not rock the fact that requirements for businesses being present in the market also include distinguished levels of in-depth intelligence, in concert justifying your raison d’être in the market at any point in time.

While still representing much of a future perspective and envisioned aspects to consider as an organisation, there is so much more to take into account in continuing the peek, e.g. organisational culture, cyber security, and so on.
Yet, as I do not dismiss any of the aforementioned attributes of a future competitive business environment as irrelevant, this contribution to business understanding should constitute an opportunity for management teams and boards seriously to consider their future strategic potential. At the same time, while attempting to wrestle prominent researchers—e.g. Kaplan and Norton (2000), (Treacy and Wiersema, 1993)—by twisting their highly qualified views on qualifications for competing in a market, I also incline towards a view that approaches to creating value from competing in a future market potentially also requires new ways of perceiving how business organisations compete.