Top 10 Essential Requirements To Be
A Great Strategic Thinker
Essential Element #4: You must have an extremely high level of awareness
of what is happening around you and be open to absorbing all that you
can. In any business, there are clues, often subtle, both internal and
external to help guide future direction and to identify opportunities.
Great strategic thinkers take all of this in and then they set aside
time to think about all the experience and information to guide them in
the planning and working on the issues, challenges and
opportunities
that lie ahead...
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Purpose
Opportunity discovery is at the heart of the
opportunity approach to business
development. This needs to be a natural element in your company's range
of activities.
Honing Your
Competitive Edge
Discovering and taking advantage of opportunities that others
don't see is a key to developing and honing your
competitive edge, no matter what industry you're in or what your role
is. Seeing and seizing opportunities are skills that can be applied
universally, if you have the curiosity, commitment, and a framework.3
Optimistic Thinking
Changing your perspective is the key to finding
success in
seeming
failure. "Optimistic thinking has sometimes gotten a bad rap as
being unrealistic, but research has found that we can indeed live
happier, healthier, and
more successful lives if we can learn to
discover opportunities in problems."3 Due to optimistic
positive thinking,
problems will become merely challenging opportunities that you can
turn to
your advantage. They provide opportunities for personal growth and can
stimulate your creativity for finding
better ways to live.
SWOT Questions
Learning Opportunities
A major American enterprise with a diverse group of huge
businesses, GE is steeped in a
learning
culture and it is this fact that makes GE a unique company.
As
Jack Welch puts it: "What sets GE apart is a
culture that uses
diversity as a limitless source of learning opportunities, a storehouse
of ideas whose breadth and richness is unmatched in world business. At the
heart of this culture is an understanding that an organization's ability to
learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate
competitive business advantage."
Turning Failures To
Opportunities: 3 Steps
1. Get rid of all negative
emotions – and lean: There is no failure, only
feedback!...
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Experimentation:
The
Key to Discovery
Experimentation means trying something new and unproven – and acknowledging
that you cannot reliably predict the outcome.
Discovering what works requires that you understand the
casual links between inputs and outputs. When it comes to searching for
cause-effect relationships, perhaps the most suitable model that emerges is
the method of experimentation that allows the most efficient scientific
progress, the scientific method as a model for
discovery.1...
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Case in Point
Amazon.com
Amazon.com broke the rules of the
book business by using the Internet rather than conventional distribution
channels.
The company was
founded by Jeff Bezos, a computer science and electrical engineering
graduate from Princeton University. Bezos had moved to Seattle after
resigning as a Senior Vice-President at D.E.Shaw, a Wall Street investment
bank. He didn’t know much about the Internet. But he came across a statistic
that the Internet was growing at 2300%, which convinced him that it was a
large growth opportunity. Not knowing much more, he plunged into the world
of e-commerce with no prior retailing experience.
The Art of Innovation: 9 Truths
By: Guy Kawasaki
-
“Let a hundred flowers blossom.” I stole this from Chairman Mao.
Innovators need to be flexible about how people use their products. Avon
created Skin So Soft to soften skin, but when parents used it as an
insect repellant, Avon went with the flow. Apple thought it created a
spreadsheet/database/wordprocessing computer; but, come to find out,
customers used it as a desktop publishing machine. The lesson is: Don't
be proud. Let a hundred flowers blossom...
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Case in Point
Dell Computer
Corporation
"Our success is due, in part, to not just an ability but a
willingness to look at things
differently," writes
Michael Dell3, the Founder & CEO of
Dell Computer Corporation. "I believe opportunity is part instinct and
part immersion - in an industry, a subject, or an area of expertise. Dell is
proof that people can learn to reorganize and take advantage of
opportunities that others are convinced don't exist. You don't have to be a
genius, or a visionary, or even a college graduate to think
unconventionally. You just need
a framework and a dream."
Happiness – It's All in Our Own Hands
When you encounter a
problem, try to
look for the good points. Everything has at least one good
point. Even sickness has its positive side. You get some extra rest
or have more time to spend with your family or you use the period of
recuperation as an opportunity to turn to
dharma...
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Success Factors...
Turning
Failed Projects Into New Opportunities...
Turning
Risks Into
Opportunities...
Turning Failures Into Opportunities...
Turning Knowledge into Opportunities...
Take a
Different View...
Effective Questioning...
Experimentation...
Main Ways...
Six Activities...
Three Questions You Should Ask Constantly...
Creative
Problem Solving
Techniques...
Stepping Out Of Your Shoes...
Observe Disruptive People...
Creative
Leadership...
Discovering Opportunities...
Evaluating Opportunities: Selected Techniques...
Prototyping –
Encouraging Accidental
Discoveries...
Competitive Innovation...
Technology
Intelligence...
Cross-Pollinate
Your Ideas with Others...
Asking Searching Questions...
Case in Point
Town & Country Grill...
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