Strategy

An Accidental MBA

~ dan ~ 1 Comment

mbabyaccident1.pngA few years back I finished an MBA. I didn’t set out to do one but thats where I ended up. There are wild MBA evangelists out there (‘it will change your life’) and the detractors (‘over hyped, you can learn this stuff from a book’) so this is my story.

Establishing an intrapreneurial enterprise within a university almost a decade ago, on the back of a decade of working with industry, I had realised clients generally trusted me on the science, but something else was driving decisions and processes. More often than not the go-no-go decisions were out of my hands and made on something else e.g. market size, profitability, budget cycles or sometimes political issues.  I read ( and still do) a lot of business books to try an get my head in the game, they were extremely useful but they only got me so far. Belonging (and being a board member) of some industry associations put me in a lot more regular contact with business speak, bootcamps ( just quietly…I’ve done a few to many of those), decision making and accelerated time frames (compared to glacial academic ones anyway),  pretty soon I realised I need to take a plunge into something a bit more rigorous. 

A Graduate Certificate in Business Administration was a great start, covering many of the basics including marketing, where I surprised myself by topping the class, HR because after all at least 50% of what I do was  working with people… it just made sense. Probably the greatest single influence there was the first introductory subject where I did my first ever scenario analysis and projection on what I had being doing in my research lab for the last 10 years. It was like a lightbulb went off, suddenly I had a crystal ball into the future. It was a nice tool to compliment my intellectual curiosity lay and to balance the pull of the next pay check, both of whichhad been unconsciously positioning my work. 

The successes were almost immediate for the bottom line. By riding trends (instead of fighting or trying to create them), consciously pursuing operational efficiency with technology tools and adopting internal lab standards everything became just that bit easier. It also gave me something more interesting to say at industry conferences than my latest algorithms 😉

Dial forward a few years and the tension of trying to be nimble in a large sluggish organisation, where sometimes I completed a ‘gig’ faster than an invoice could be issued ( and by faster it was only a few months of work) I decided to study up on entrepreneurship and innovation, (which turned out to be more than Malcom Turnbull’s latest buzz words). 

Sadly my time at the helm of the entrepreneurial unit came to a close not long after, it had become mainstream enough that it was swallowed back into the loving arms of the tenured. So I took the opportunity to finish up a few more interesting subjects, in particular Strategy (which nicely complimented the first subject I started with) and a smattering of finance and accounting. Just for fun, in a project I looked into the growth of online tertiary education, eerily the case organisation I chose ended up just a year later confirming most the findings (yet unable to steer itself enough to take advantage of them)…how cool!!

Anyways thats my MBA story, thanks to Griffith, Stanford and Sunshine Coast universities I entered the wilderness of the gig economy better prepared than what one might expect from a yesteryear Physics PhD. For me an MBA hasn’t been a silver bullet, but rather a partner on the journey. Its been a gateway to new skills, surviving uncertainty and learning to enjoy the ride. I’m continuing to do research, consultancy with industry, with a side order of online teaching and working within some growing SME’s whilst raising a family too!

You can pay big bucks (or not so much) for an MBA, but thats something for another post …

Finding your centre

~ dan

porters five forces1.jpgWhere ever you are in your business chances are you want to make it a grow a bit or a least make it a bit easier on yourself in the trenches. This is where Porters fives competitive forces can come in really handy. Just by asking yourself these 5 simple questions you can get a better idea of your competitive landscape no matter what kind of business you are running.

New Entrants: How likely are new people likely to enter your business? Are their barriers that stop them entering

Substitutes: Is their a substitute that can replace your product or service? Sometimes this is a completely new product or technology?

Customers: What is the bargaining power of your customers? Are they price sensative

Suppliers: Are you dependant on any suppliers, How much power do they have?

Your Rivals: How competitive is the industry you are in? How many other options are there

Usually at least one of these forces is dominant. Just by identifying this force and doing something about it is a key to improving your competitiveness and overall success! For example with hind sight we can see that the digital camera was a substitute that eventually did in Kodak, who ironically were the inventor of the digital camera.

Whats your most powerful force and what can you do about it? Once you know it, it’s important to let your customers and potential customer know about it!

Academic idea to entreprise

~ dan

product market fit in university researchI still do quite a bit of work in the university sector. (I guess you get that when you come from a research background). Universities are full of amazing and very capable people with great ideas. These ideas are often well tested in the laboratory too!

The real challenge is getting them out to the ‘Real World’,. To help get ideas out along this path Universities often get in consultants. Its here that it can come a bit unstuck, as the consultant is looking to cherry pick a ready to go product and take it out to industry to get some backing. I think there are a couple of challenges with this approach. Firstly it assumes that a great idea in the lab is equivalent to a product and secondly it really limits the scope of the opportunity that exists within the capabilities in the university.

Instead its important to work together on the whole process. Rather than start with a a laboratory outcome,  start with the capabilities that exist therein. And at the other end of the process rather than looking at a particular market, start at the industry level and look at their needs and pain points. Use then the Capabilities and Industry needs to drive the process of developing a product and a market opportunity together. Where they intersect is the product-market fit and it is at this spot that the real opportunity exists.

Knocking on an academics door and asking for a “value proposition” is unlikely to achieve a result, start with the relationship and the whole picture, build a great value proposition together!

 

The Fat Smoker

~ dan

StrategyFatSmokerDavidMaister.jpgThere is a great strategy book about a fat smoke (Strategy and the Fat Smoker” by D. Maister). You can read the whole book if you like but the Itty Bitty take on it is this: The fat smoker knows he has to give up the cigars, the booze and start exercising to lose some weight…but nothing actually happens until the heart attack. Then and only then does he take action and do something about it. Then once the crisis is over its probably not long till he’s back on the booze and the fags. 

Its a lot like this for businesses too don’t you think?

Real change is hard, (thats what the book is about) but the rewards that can come with it can be unqualified success! What do you need to change before the crisis hits?

Consumer decision making process

~ dan

Consumer-decision-making-websites-2.pngIt takes a long time for a prospect to actually make the decision to buy a product or service. There are several processes they go through, and at each step there is a funnelling, or more correctly a loss, of prospects. This is called the consumer decision making process. If you understand your customer you can help them through each of these stages by embedding information and values that will aid a successful conversion.

Depending on who you ask there are a different number of stages, but most agree on these three main ones: Awareness, Evaluation and finally Decision. One of the goals of marketing is to make sure the input (Awareness) attracts as many as possible. Also at each step as you progress through Evaluation (does this product or service suit my needs?) and Decision (I’m going to pickup the phone right now) you want to retain as many as possible.

Pretty simple in theory. Understanding these elements and incorporating them into your website and and brand are really critical!

Turing your hobby into a business

~ dan

doing what you don't like1.jpgIt’s an attractive idea isn’t it?, take something you really enjoy doing and turn it into your career. The trouble is a dream turned into reality can sometime become a nightmare. Somewhere in the process it could also takes away the very thing you love,  by taking al the fun out of it…but this need not be the case.

Your hobby and probably your passion is probably your key competitive advantage, perhaps you are already making some income out of it already. The challenge to making it viable is finding the key things people willing to pay for.  For many just thinking about turning a dollar somehow cheapens their endeavour, but it the secret of making a successful go of it.

Finding customers and developing channels (ways of reaching them) are then the vital key ingredient for sustainable. This involves doing and developing a whole new range of activities that will work hand in hand with your passion to bring it to realisation. 

The trouble for the newly converted hobbyist is that where passion fuels the business activity itself, but finding customers and reaching them through channels is well not nearly as exciting. Some of it you won’t mind, but some of it you really won’t want to do This is where discipline comes it, doing the need to do the activities that aren’t very exciting. For the activities that you don’t want to do, you cannot fuel these will passion…they need something else.. a discipline and a will to succeed!

3 things you need to succeed in business

~ dan

3 things to succeed in business.pngThere are only 3 things you need to succeed in business.

1. A product or service

2. A market ie customers

3. A way to reach customers 

First up you need a product and that someone wants (and is willing to pay for). Steve Blank calls this the product-market fit and its pretty much Startup 101. 

The third thing are your channels these are what connect to two and without these you are likely to make it as a business. Most businesses start with a few customers and grow a bit by word of mouth referrals. Getting beyond this understanding your channels is critical to making your business grow, will you /do you advertise for example to who and how do you do it

A digital shop front (i.e. a website)  can super charge your word of mouth by acting as a ‘confirmation page’ as one of the first things customers do is look you up and check you out. Its also an important bit of glue linking your other channels and funnelling them back to you.

 

The basis of competition

~ dan

brisbane website strategy
If your in business then there is a good chance you have competitors. Having a basic understanding of how you are competing with them can improve the bottom line immensely.

The bright minds at Harvard University c/- Michael Porter have turned their attention to this back in the 1980’s.  Essentially in comes to to how do you want to compete (i.e. what business you are in? ) and where your competitive advantage lies (what do you do that is special?)

If your business is broad in nature vs something very specific it entails a different approach think . What approach you take depends on if you want to focus on being a cost leader or being different?

It turns out that thinking about these basic competitive strategies is pretty handy in the way you present yourself on a website too.