3. The future is not one-size-fits-all, it is proprietary.

When you see a cow standing in a field, what do you see? A farmer may see his chores. A toddler may see something scary. Ben & Jerry see a potential supplier. The point is that we all see things differently, based on our experiences and what is important to us (our values). The future is the same way. Companies perceive the future according to their past experiences, their core competencies, and their values and aspirations. Therefore, two companies from the same industry may see the same forces in the marketplace, but paint two totally different pictures of the future. The future you see is proprietary to you, based on your values. It cannot be delivered by a consultant, it must be discovered by you.

With these basic assumptions about the future, you are now in a position to explore the future for strategic opportunities that exist there.

Future Business Opportunities Will Drive a New Corporate Strategy

What does your company currently understand about its future? How might your markets change? What business opportunities will exist in these future markets? How will your company participate in these markets? Who in the company is focused on that question? These are important questions for all companies in all markets to consider as they create their business strategies.

In thinking about what your future business strategy might look like, there is often the question of which comes first—the new business opportunity or the new corporate strategy? Although not quite as perplexing as its chicken-egg cousin, this question might make for an interesting research project for an aspiring professor. Do corporations establish their strategies and then look for business opportunities to support those strategies or is it the other way around—first finding a business opportunity and then creating a new corporate strategy around it?

A case could be made for the strategy coming first. A quantitative analysis of markets done in the context of a strategic model (such as Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model, or Bain & Company’s Profit Pools Analysis) can identify ‘‘gaps’’ in the market, areas of profitability, or market segments where the company could have a sustained competitive advantage. In this case, a preferred company positioning in the marketplace can be identified first, leading to a search for new business opportunities to support that strategy.

However, we believe that new corporate strategies more often come from first identifying a new business opportunities. Many of the examples in this book reflect a new corporate strategy being created based on the identification of exciting new business opportunities. Having a portfolio of new business opportunities to choose from will provide senior management even greater flexibility in crafting a competitive strategy. Henry Mintzberg, a professor at McGill University and author of The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, observes that opportunities beget strategies. He wrote in the Academy of Management Executives, ‘‘Good strategies grow out of ideas that have been kicking around the company, and initiatives that have been taken by all sorts of people in the company. . . . That means that a lot of very effective, so-called strategists or chief executives don’t come up with the brilliant new strategy.’’

Robert Galvin, former CEO of electronics giant Motorola, claims that in his more than forty years at the helm, it was the new business options available to him that often drove his corporate strategies. He explained, ‘‘Strategy is determining the most worthy place to apply your resources. You allocate the resources to the ideas that have the most promising potential. Before allocating those resources, you should have surveyed all of your options and selected the best one.’’