Five Future Strategies You Need Right Now

Research-Technology Management, March-April, 2008

Five Future Strategies You Need Right Now; George Stalk, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA; 2008; 128 pp (4 3/8 x 7 1/4 inches), $20.00.

"These issues may still seem to be faint signals to you," writes George Stalk, "but like so many emerging issues of the past fifty years ... these are likely to appear on the front pages of the business press before you know it." Stalk, a senior partner with the Boston Consulting Group, identifies these issues--along with five strategies for dealing with them--from the "open files" he and his colleagues maintain. These files are repositories of relevant information on a topic or issue that intrigues him, and he puts them in three categories:

"1. Faint signals: Issues that will probably become strategies but have shown only a few, very slight, signs so far.

2. Watch list: Potential strategies where the sources of competitive advantage are not entirely clear.

3. Hallucinations: Provocative issues that are so out there that they may never materialize, or at least not within this lifetime."

The five strategies he describes in this volume of The Harvard Business School Press "Memo to the CEO" series "all began as faint signals, but the files on them are now sufficiently thick that the sources of advantage are not only abundantly clear, but undeniable."

1. Supply chain gymnastics--managing a supply chain that includes suppliers or partners in Asia, especially China.

2. Sidestepping economies of scale--exploring new approaches to mass production.

3. Dynamic pricing--matching the price of your products and services with the immediate, changing needs of your customers.

4. Embracing complexity--attracting the four kinds of customers for whom complexity is a plus.

5. Infinite bandwidth--managing information so you can get it when and how you need it--at no cost.

"The best executives look far beyond their own industries and competitors for insight," Stalk concludes. "Along the way, they are sure to catch the faint signals of a new world in the making. Then the hard part comes: do they wait and see, or do they see and make the others wait?"