The sad thing about most strategists is how their imagination is constrained by the structure of their industry. They fail to see that competitive advantage is the product of an innovative and creative strategy. Having been inculcated with the same information from the damn same institutions or books, they have lost their sense of creativity; thus, the belief in their own creative ability. They either believe that they have to differentiate or opt for low cost strategy. It is one or the other; rarely both. This line of thinking takes the set of conditions that defined an industry as given, immutable and unchangeable. In reality, an industry is made off of individuals firms; thus, the conditions of a given industry is the outcome of the actions of each those individual firms. The rules are thus made overtime with each of their individual actions. As those rules become normalize, they become set of assumptions; the things that we take for granted or the rulebooks that we think can never be altered.
When I came back home to launch a school, I felt that everyone believed that the sort of educative institutions that we could design had to be constrained by the environment. Per se, most elementary programs open doors at 7am until 2 to 3 pm. In addition, there is also a strict barrier between elementary programs and professional training center within the educational industry. I did not want us to follow this route because it meant fighting for the same customer in a diminishing industry. I believed that there was a set of customers that this market, as structured currently, was ignoring. Differentiation or low cost was not and could not be our only set of options. We certainly had to differentiate, but we had to do it outside of the norms of the industry. We decided that our school would open at 8am until 5pm and we will keep the kids for the day among many other acts. One immediate benefit of extending the school day is the enlargement of our target group. We were no longer just targeting our immediate or surrounding communities. All those who travelled to distance could drop their child and pick them up on their way back. Moreover, the strict barrier between elementary school program and professional development center also created an opportunity. We decided to develop our own pedagogic center to develop a core capability within two to three years.
I am intentionally not revealing all the details of our strategic plan, but I hope this example illustrate that “while industry conditions exist, individual firms created them” to quote from Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Industries rules are made overtime; thus, they can be shaped and reshaped. The structuralist, but popular view of strategy deriving mainly from the work of Michael Porter is partly why many strategists are no longer able to position their program or solution accordingly. As the world become more competitive, most strategists will have to become more creative to design programs or solutions outside of the structure of their industry. They got to learn to question the set of assumptions of their industry and tap into their individual or collective imagination. They must keep in mind that innovative strategists are change-makers and barriers breakers. The key to their answer lie within their imagination. They just have to believe in their own create capabilities and abilities to shape the norms of a given industry.
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