The Return of the Portfolio Analysis in Strategy

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Think Big, and Good Luck! Reimagining Portfolio Analysis Championed by strategy consultancies like BCG and McKinsey, portfolio analysis became the corporate strategy approach of choice in the seventies. Soon after, it fell out of favor, being criticized as "a tool that led managers to focus on minimizing financial risks rather than on investing in new opportunities that require a long-term commitment of resources" (Pankaj Ghemawat, Competition and Business Strategy in Historical Perspective, Business History Review, 2002). Now, decades later, with significant advances in big data and AI (and a new mindset), we will be increasingly able to understand and manage companies and economies as complex systems. The Ofmos model offers a path in that direction. Earlier this month, economist and complexity thinker W. Brian Arthur wrote "I see this shift in economics as part of a larger shift in science itself. All the sciences are shedding their certainties, embracing openness and process, and asking how structures or phenomena come into being. There is no reason that economics should differ in this regard. Complexity economics sees the economy not as mechanistic, static, timeless and perfect but as organic, always creating itself, alive and full of messy vitality." (W. Brian Arthur, Foundations of Complexity Economics, Nature Reviews Physics, 2021). READ AND PASS ON. Ofmos Sessions with Commentary Watch Ofmos Sessions JOIN THE MOVEMENT! "Big Picture" of the Month Software is eating the world, sure. But cloud is also eating (the) software -- which, at this point, has more important and lasting implications on how (software) companies innovate and where they look to create customer value. BE OUR PARTNER. Stanford Continuing Studies Course Corporate Strategy at Scale: Emerging Thinking on How Companies and Economies Evolve Instructor: Cristian Mitreanu Dates: April 15 - June 3 Registration: Open One of the key leadership dimensions required in our increasingly dynamic business and economic environment is a sound understanding of the big picture. Shrinking product lifecycles and corporate lifespans make it essential for those in charge of bringing to market the innovations of tomorrow to widen and extend their horizons further into the future. This course introduces a novel way of understanding how businesses and economies, as complex systems of unique business spaces, evolve and interrelate over long periods of time. It is a holistic perspective that allows us to define and analyze emerging behaviors that cannot be determined simply by examining each system part in isolation. In this course, we will learn about (1) a new theory of needs and value; (2) commoditization and innovation as the two fundamental forces that shape the business and economic environment; (3) the foundation of lasting corporate success—an alignment between a company’s intent and its actual approach to business; and (4) an economy’s natural behavior and its impact on the society. We will discuss examples from such companies as Apple and IBM, and will review and reassess some established and popular theoretical concepts. The framework will provide those in product management or product marketing with a valuable new tool for positioning new products, motivating teams, and crafting successful strategies. Guest Speakers include: April 15: "Science Fiction as a Business Tool" - ROGER SPITZ, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Techistential April 22: "Understanding Needs in Emerging Markets" - SRINIVAS VENUGOPAL, Assistant Professor of Marketing at University of Vermont April 29: "Strategic Cartography: Mapping Tech Product Expansions" - KIT MERKER, Chief Operating Officer at Nobl9 May 6: "Market Segmentation as a Key Success Driver in a Fast-Changing World" - JENNIFER WHELAN, Vice President and Head of B2B Marketing at Verizon Media May 13: Title to be Determined - FLORIAN PESTONI, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at InOrbit, Inc. May 20: "Complexity Trade-Offs in Companies and Economies" - ALEXANDER SIEGENFELD, Graduate Student Researcher at New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) and MIT Media Lab May 27: Title to be Determined - ANDREW KVAAL, Chief Operating Officer at Ampion, Inc. Learn More | Register Now Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*