Business Strategy 499 '10

How to source ideas!!!

This post is related to what we have discussed about generating ideas. It is about going to extreme and having bold ideas.
Strategy stripping is one of the tools for sourcing ideas. With this strategy, the focus is on the essentials of the business, the things you are already good at, and you take them to their absurd extreme.

This strategy will include
• Strip to the core
• Go way overboard
• Scale back a little
In the first one, you begin by listing all the elements of your current corporate mission and strategy. Then each manager has to take turns making each element more concrete and striking from the list one strategy element that the company could survive without. When the list has gotten painfully short, then you have reached the core of your strategy. You have now taken off (stripped down) nonessential aspects of your business. E.g., for a retailer the core might be “distinct personal service for high-end consumers”. It must not be something as vague as “excellence”.

In the second one, you generate alternatives for radicalizing the company. For each core element, ask yourself, “This strategy is all well and good, but what it mean to take it too far? How could this strategy get us into trouble? This is focused creativity that should yield radical, even absurd ideas.

Finally, you must scale these ideas back a little bit. First, look at what you came up with and see which ones spark interest and then seek some outside feedback from experts or from the market itself. Some ideas may be extreme but uninteresting. Then make a modified version that is toned down just enough that you might possibly pull it off. At the end of this step, you should have several bold ideas to consider for pushing your current strategy to its extremes.