Transforming Business to Stand Out: Maverick Strategies Analysis

1. You can’t be remarkable by following someone else who’s remarkable… The thing that all great companies have in common is that they have nothing in common. Seth Godin (2003) Transform your Business by Becoming Remarkable The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality. Kjell Nordtrom & Jonas Ridderstrale (2002) Funky Business maverick strategies Maverick strategies 11:00

6.  1. Draw an organigraph or a value chimera of Synear. Why do you think this might be a more effective depiction of Synear than an organization chart or a value chain? 2. What were the strengths and weaknesses of Synear’s initial strategy to copy and replicate Sanquan as the “best practice” model? 3. Work through Kim and Mauborgne’s five “value innovation” questions to determine the value innovations that Synear’s managers have achieved…

7.  4. Can you also identify any examples of “blue ocean” strategies followed by Synear? 5. Define Synear’s particular maverick-ness, or “legitimate strangeness, in eight words or less? How would a statement like this help orient and animate the company for the future? 6. What do you think Synear’s next moves should be?

8.  1. Would you have supported the decision to lend a further £50m? 2. What are the main considerations for banks involved in this form of finance? 3. It is clear from the case that it was touch and go for the entrepreneur gaining the necessary finance for his product. Why was he successful in getting finance? Could he have improved his approach to the bank?...

9.  4. This is a real case. The identity of the client firm is revealed under Case Authors section. Now that you are aware of the client firm’s identity, does this affect your answers to the earlier questions? What lessons can be learned about the way in which early stage finance and entrepreneurial endeavours work alongside each other?

10.  1. Why do you think that design has become “absolutely strategic” in the auto industry? 2. What other elements, apart from design, are important in automobile manufacture nowadays? 3. The case describes Jaguar’s attempts to keep the brand individualized and distinctive. However, Jaguar is now owned by the Ford Group. Why would large automobile companies be looking to buy up smaller brands? Can you use the value chimera to depict an organization like the Ford Group?...

11.  4. Why might listening to focus groups not be a good thing in this industry? 5. Why would companies like Citroen and Renault be seeking to “inject more Frenchness” into what they do?

12.  1. Where do you think Levi’s “standard models” (like 501 jeans) sit on the S-curve? Why are Levi’s taking the risk of developing the new customized approach described above? 2. Try drawing Levis, incorporating its customization arm, using a generic value chain. How would you customize this chain to more usefully reflect Levis new strategies? Do you think Levi’s customization approaches will make its standard models obsolete?...

13.  3. Having incorporated customers into its processes, where do you think Levis’, Build-A-Bear and Land Rover’s strategies for the future are coming from? Is there a school of strategy, or combination of schools, that you think reflects this? Or does this represent another, new school of the strategy process? 4. Can you identify any examples of value innovation or blue ocean strategies that are described in this case? 5. Following Dru’s approach what verbs would you attach to the Levis, Build-A-Bear and Land Rover brands to capture their particular maverick-ness?

14.  1. What effects might the way a workplace is designed have on the development of strategy? 2. How might the growing awareness of “diversity management” and the importance of “shaking together” different ideas and perspectives impact on the future shape of workplace design? 3. Which of the developments in workplace design described in the case do you think are value innovations and which are just innovations for the sake of innovation?...

15.  4. The case describes Apple’s maverick approach setting off something of a revolution in workplace design. Do you think IBM and Apple’s other competitors should have followed in Apple’s footsteps in this regard? 5. Do you think there is one best approach to workplace design or should this design reflect the particularities of each organization?

16.  1. Why do you think that a lot of ideas in management and strategy that are claimed to be “new” might actually quite similar to earlier thinking? 2. In the light of your answer to question 1, why might traditional craft organizations be better at thinking differently than larger more “professionally” managed companies?...

17.  3. What elements are these craft organizations now “shaking together”, to use Kostler’s term, that have not been combined before? And why might this shaking be difficult for larger, more conventional organizations to copy? 4. If you were a manager of a large professional company, what lessons would you learn from the examples of the “craft” organizations described in this case and in the Time story?

18.  1. From a “maverick strategy” perspective what is wrong with the vast majority of people seeing organizational structure in much the same way? 2. When we gave a matched sample of arts and business students the Pictionary task outlined above, the arts students were far more likely to draw people interacting or ‘flow type’ diagrams. Why might the arts students have been less likely to draw the standard triangular hierarchies? …

19.  3. One difficulty often encountered in organizational settings is how to expose common core assumptions. However, drawing and humour are two particularly acute methods for doing this. The cartoon (11-7.2) is generally found to be humorous. The question is, why? What assumptions is it attacking? 4. While the triangular hierarchy may be a good way of depicting the classical planning, positioning and design schools of strategy, what alternative shapes or forms would you draw to more accurately reflected some of the other schools or approaches described in table 11.1 in this chapter? 5. What are the advantages of using alternative forms and schools to think about strategy development?

21. Pathfinder Checklist 1. Macro-shocks  2. Movers & shakers  3. Industry terrain  4. The big picture  5. Comp advantage  6. Living strategy  7. Character  8. Crossing-borders  9. Managing change  10. Sustainability  11. Mav’k strategies 