A letter to a company in need of new business

Urgent
Company in need of new business
About to look for ways to reduce even more costs
Bringing HOPE 2010

July/August 2009

Reference: 2009-NBA-0001-OA

Subject: New Business Accelerator

Dear executive,

In fighting the economic crisis, companies try many different strategies.

We will be fine… we just need better marketing and better cooperation with our suppliers. Or oursource our IT.

We need to cancel our training programmes but make sure our staff will stay. And we need to innovate better.

Perhaps we need to simplify our business portfolio and reduce our workforce. And offer discounts!

But first we need additional resources! So we need to cut costs! And focus on sales!

If anything, we need to stay calm! And we need more control so we can manage!

Sometimes, none of these different strategies work and these companies conclude:
… we don’t know what to do anymore!

This is what we tell them.
We advise our clients to stop fighting the economic crisis and start adapting to it. In an economic crisis, a company’s most challenging task is not to maximize shareholder value, nor is it about mergers and acquisitions or growth and expansion. Any company’s most challenging task is to adapt. To maintain a thriving business, you will have to reinvent yourself. Perhaps you already have, perhaps you are about to get started. A small self-assessment will tell you where you are. Question number one: do you have a strategy? If yes, do you have a vision as well? In most cases, you do. So you know where you are. And you know where you are going.
Right?

Wrong.
We did not expect a crisis in our financial markets. Nor did we expect it would lead to a global market crisis in business-to-business markets followed by a sharp market downturn in business-to-consumer markets. These events were probably followed by an internal organization crisis within your company and possibly a leadership crisis as well. And there you have it. We did not know this economic crisis. And we can still only estimate its impact. Therefore, your company will need to adapt. And this is where our New Business Accelerator approach proves valuable.

To reduce more costs…
or to generate new business,
that’s not really the question anymore!
Cost reduction is one way to adapt. Reducing costs is something you are likely to have become more familiair with over the past few months. The other side of adapting to an economic crisis is increasing revenues and finding new profitable business. When it is cost reduction that starts to make you feel like your company is coming to a dead end, searching for new business is your best way out. The path of new business generation is a path currently less travelled. Perhaps because you expect it to take lots of time and you are not sure about the outcomes from the start. These are obviously reasonable and logical hesitations. However, in an economic crisis, we believe creativity is more powerful than reason and logic. And creativity works well under the pressure and within the set limitations of our New Business Accelerator approach.

Our New Business Accelerator follows ten steps to adaptation:

1. realize you are in an economic crisis;
2. redefine your leadership;
3. reestablish your mission;
4. revise your vision;
5. rethink how you communicate in your market;
6. redefine your value proposition;
7. redistinguish yourself from your competitors;
8. redesign your organization;
9. reorganize your alliances; and
10. refinance your company.

We explain the essentials in our New Business Accelerator approach in more detail in the appendix.

Want to know more? Send me an e-mail

Ouke Arts
New Business Consultant

Appendix
10 New Business Accelerator essentials

1. time
In new business development, time is as valuable as it is scarce. We believe that as long as your company perceives time as an enemy, time will work against you. In the New Business Accelerator approach, time is your company’s new ally. The New Business Accelerator has a structure of five day sets to keep up the pressure.

2. technology
Business developers are always looking for new drivers of future growth. Design, technology and business modelling are today’s most promising development tools. By using them together, companies go beyond the boundaries of their current business knowledge and find new ways to create value. This is the key to any acceleration.

3. space
In new business exploration, preparation is as essential as exploration. Participants in a New Business Accelerator project need space to learn from each other, to agree on current realities and to open to new visions. We create a fast, supportive and functional space for new business: a New Business Accelerator lab.

4. facilitation
Facilitation is the art of leading people through processes toward agreed-upon objectives. At it’s very best, it is done in a manner that encourages participation, owner-ship and creativity. In the New Business Accelerator approach, the skills, principles and practices of facilitation are applied in your company’s benefit.

5. visualisation
Visual thinking essentially is about constructing meaning. With visual techniques like drawing, sketching and modelling, your company will be able to capture the big picture of any new business proposition. Visiualisation enables your company to formulate, explore and define new business opportunities.

6. do-it-yourself
We believe that for new businesses to be successful - whether your company defines success in monetary terms or not - they will have to be invented by you. It’s about your dialogue and ideas. Do-it-yourself and then it will be your company that discovers the value, triggers the ideas and sells the proposition.

7. business model innovation
Business model innovation can come from anywhere. Just forget about the past and don’t consider using benchmarking. The New Business Accelerator focuses on more effective types of business model innovation. Your new business will be driven by your resources, your offer and your customers.

8. scenarios
The New Business Accelerator is as much about generating new ideas as it is about realizing new business strategies. We develop scenarios to identify cost and revenue impact, customer impact and multiple value propositions. In taking the step from strategy to execution, we deliver your value.

9. trends
With a world class design heritage of over 80 years, our trends partner is a creative force for innovation that strives to create solutions that satisfy people’s needs. By sharing their deep understanding of current and future needs and desires, our trends partner excels in delivering trends and insights that will set the scene for your new business search.

10. visual business modelling
Our business modelling partner is expert in visual business modelling, exploring and implementing new business models. Connected to The Grove, a San Francisco based company that designs tools that enable your company to successfully visualize and implement new business, they will deliver world-class expertise.