All Intelligence Briefings that have been published by Rodenberg Tillman & Associates can be found here.
In December 2016, Fortune Magazine published a ‘Blue-Ribbon List’ of some 34 companies, based on a combination of seven ratings from Fortune 500, Global 500, Best Companies to Work For, Change the World List, World’s Most Admired Companies, 100 Fastest-Growing Companies and Business Person of the Year.
In our strategic intelligence practices, we see many misunderstandings about strategy. Firstly, many of us see strategy as ‘strategy concepts’ such as SWOT-analysis, Five Forces, Value-Chain Strategy, Scenario Planning, Customer Loyalty, Core Competencies, Blue Ocean Strategy and others, many of which have largely faded after enjoying a few years of attention and acclaim. Secondly, strategy concepts too often conflate goals with ideas: they try to maximize speed, increase quality, maximize net promotor score, or expand growth horizons.
The world did not face many geopolitical tensions during the period from 1998 to 2008. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we saw Pax Americana at its peak together with the Great Moderation: we experienced low inflation, low interest rates, stable economic growth, low rates of unemployment and the rise of the BRIC-countries.
It is fascinating to read these quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the bestselling “The Black Swan” and “Antifragile”. Taleb is speaking about the IYI, the Intellectual Yet Idiot, a product of modernity which has been accelerating since the mid-20th century, to reach its local maximum today, along with the broad category of people without skin in the game who have been invading many walks of life.
We estimate the amount of debt in the financial world to exceed the amount of global debt of US$ 152 trillion (company, consumer and government debt) by far. In business one makes strategic and business plans as result of one’s scenario plans, strategic war-mapping efforts and Grey Swan analyses with the aim of getting to the future first. However, the levels of volatility and uncertainty in 2016-2018 are extremely high, and force us to try and create maximum agility in our companies. Europe will face two large Grey Swans: the first is financial, and the second political; they might, in addition, reinforce one another.
We have listed twelve Grey Swans which we see as, some of, the driving forces which will weaken the economic climate across Europe.
In the fall of 2016, newspapers such as The New York Times and Financial Times published articles on the recovery of the economy. Is this really the case? It seems we cannot rely on these articles in these otherwise highly-regarded newspapers. From 2001 to 2016 the percentage of the upper-middle and middle class in the US fell from 63% to 51%. This means that some 25 million American economic lives crashed.
This statement comes from McKinsey publications in July and August 2016 on ‘income inequality’. This new reality means that a new generation of young people in Europe and the US risks ending up poorer than their parents. From 2005-2014 around 65-70% of the population faced flat or falling incomes. Prior to 2005, this percentage was just 2%. This means that 65-70% of the total population faced a lack of economic progress. The main causes were the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the slow recovery that occurred since then. What are the implications?
It was interesting to read first about Unilever’s Consumer and Market Insights Group (CMI), and then Christensen’s comments that most companies spend too much time and money compiling data-rich models that make them masters of description but failures at prediction. Let us explain. Organizations now know more about their customers than ever before. Big-data analytics can provide an enormous variety and volume of customer information at unprecedented speed. Almost all companies have established structured, disciplined innovation processes and have brought in highly-skilled talent to run them. Structure is created to show correlations.
Citigroup established a SWAT team to take the lead from the new fintech start-ups, which are threatening the global multi-trillion-dollar banking industry. Citigroup wants to ‘fintegrate’ fast because they want to be ahead of the revolution, according to Fortune Magazine in July 2016.