Most of the time, when I read strategic plans, I’m struck by their triviality. I think : « another bunch of platitudes ». No specificity. No creativity. No excitement. I don’t want to criticize my friends working in top consultancy firms, or others in megacorporations, but I must say that I rarely found anything vivid in their technocratic strategies.
Time of classical strategic analysis has passed. The world is too unpredictable and the notion of tradtional competition itself is obsolete. And when I see some of my students still pulling out the old 5 forces Porter model out of their bags, I ‘m just frozen !
Strategic thinking should be supported by new paradigms. A number of entrepreneurs will even argue that you don’t need strategies. They’ll talk about agility and design thinking, creativity and innovation. But these are methods and attitudes. Strategy is about setting directions, making clear decisions and giving sense to action. Being in a middle of chaos or lost in a jungle doesn’t change anything to that.
As a number of my colleagues, professors and analysts, have been addressing these issues recently, I’d like to point out another way to think of strategies. This comes out of my understanding of a number of cases I have been observing, analyzing and teaching.
Whatever method you used to generate your strategic scenarios, I recommend that you SPICE UP your final option.
SPICE UP is a model I developed a few years ago to understand how you can better position a brand or a corporate value proposition. S.P.I.C.E stands for Sexy, Personality, Intelligence, Community and Emotions. U.P. means Ultimate and Personalization. If you’re strong on all these points and if you can blend them into a distinctive concept, the chance is you can build a strong, great, distinctive story around it !
Let’s take an example. Apple, the biggest capitalized company in the world, is a S.exy brand. People don’t buy apple products on reason, they just want them ! So much that they’re ready to pay an enormous premiumvs competitors. The brand has a strong P.ersonality, long associated with its founder Steve Jobs. Apple is a company promoting I.ntelligent solutions for intelligent people . They created an extremely strong C.ommunity of users and ambassadors. Apple plays constantly on E.motions. Finally, Apple means for its. fans « the U.ltimate choice ». And they engaged very soon in product design that would entail P.ersonalization.
So, it’s time to SPICE UP your strategy and create more value than ever !
Be inspired !
Jean-Pierre Baeyens 