A Wake Up Call For Business

Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth – Mark W. Johnson – (Harvard Business Review)

Try as I might, I could not think of any industry or business sector that has not been impacted by digital transformation. Now more than ever businesses need to be nimble and be able to act both proactively and re-actively to competitive challenges and disruption.

The flat out failure of so many businesses who either could not or would not change their business model should be a wake up call that is loud and clear. Tick of the list: Sears, Kmart, Bonton, Toys R Us, Blockbuster, Blackberry and many others. That clarion call, while not new, should have you asking if you are prepared to take action and if you have the structure in place to transform your business for growth.

Strategy and innovation consultant Mark W. Johnson has been championing for businesses to be ready to take this kind of action since his 2009 book Seizing the White Space. Johnson has revised and updated the book and the title in Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth to account for the blisteringly rapid pace of change that has occurred in the interim.

In the book, Johnson lays out a great, workable framework for business to embrace dynamic change and put it into practice right out of the box. If your scratching your head and wondering where to even start a transition, Johnson provides a road map to reinvention. I have never been a fan of reinventing the wheel, but reinvention may be a misnomer here; this is more of guide path to retooling the way you do business that gives you a leg up on the process by identifying the tools you need for success.

You will likely have more than a few AHA! Moments, as Johnson identifies not only what companies have done successfully, but also illustrates with examples those that failed to act in in turn failed outright. The advice offered up here is useful to both existing businesses to make the transformation or startups to put the framework in place from the start to be nimble from the get go.