Confronting unexplored environments

The title of this eBook is &quote;Confronting unexplored environments.&quote; The six papers offer guides for strategic leaders as they experiment with new management systems and practices that will allow them to identify opportunities amid uncertainty and to adapt to emerging markets. For example, as more leaders open up their enterprises, the authors of the first paper predict that the most innovative organizations will cooperate in business ecosystems, which are defined as complex webs of interdependent enterprises and relationships that serve customers best by working together. For more than a decade, two INSEAD researchers have become famous for their comprehensive approach to the formulation and execution of strategies aimed at the creation of new market spaces - the &quote;blue oceans&quote; of uncontested commerce. But as the concepts of &quote;blue ocean&quote; and &quote;red ocean&quote; strategies were being tossed around in management meetings in companies across the globe, managers often muddled those ideas together with disruption theory, niche marketing, customer-focused innovation and other pioneering practices. In an interview, the researchers clear up some common misconceptions. The authors of the third paper advise senior management on how to broadly survey their company's high-potential innovation opportunities. They explain the critical six early-stage practices: know what you want to achieve; own a point of view about the future; define the innovation search fields; manage to the customer's desired outcome; know your own competencies and invest accordingly and draw the innovation roadmap. The most innovative companies view uncertainty as a source of opportunity and profit. It requires well-honed strategic leadership to design and deploy the kind of organizational capabilities that enable such firms to anticipate discontinuity sooner and adapt faster. The authors of the fourth paper identify the six abilities managers need to practice and show how the best innovators win the long game by making frequent tactical adjustments along the way in response to surprise and uncertainty. The real performance of many large publicly-owned corporations that continue to implement the obsolete management practices of hierarchical bureaucracy and pursue the goal of maximizing shareholder value with the implicit or explicit intent of influencing the share price is in steady decline. Such enshrined principles and processes of leadership and management, which served the world well during the 20th Century, are a hindrance to companies that now need to practice continuous innovation. The author of the fifth paper addresses these issues. In the 1960s, to grasp the potential of technology to revolutionize discount retailing, Sam Walton sought out early tech enthusiasts, recruited and hired them, constantly learned from them, promoted them to top leadership positions and ultimately built the Walmart empire with them. The sixth paper advises modern leaders who don't have a background in technology on how to build a community like Sam Walton's.