I just devoured Find Your Next by Andrea Kates. What a timely book! She addresses the very questions that many companies are struggling with. The business environment has changed enormously in the last ten or even five years, and companies need new ways of thinking in order to prosper. This book offers tools for just that.
The next great thing in your business can begin when someone in your organization has an idea or a hunch. Kates writes that until now, the journey to follow that idea would have started with dissection; measuring strengths, evaluating past results, and scrutinizing industry peers. The existing silos of thinking would define the options for an analysis. But she insists that the new way of thinking is not to tweak each element individually. The way to go is to create something bigger and all-inclusive, and then create a game plan how to get there
Find Your Next taps into new patterns that have been proven to drive business growth. These patterns draw inspiration from genomics. Scientists have been able to identify, map, and learn from patterns of DNA. In the same way, you can break down the core DNA of your company into basic elements.
Kates presents a framework of six key elements of business DNA that define the success of a company. The six elements of the business genome are:
- Product and service innovation
- Customer impact
- Process design
- Talent and leadership
- Secret sauce
- Trendability
A company that wants to "find its next" can use the framework as a system to sort through ideas and use them to create a new, integrated combination. Kates underlines that business genomics combines art and science; identification of business opportunities is part intuition, part analysis. "The last era was about models and forecasting. Today's era is about foresight."
The sections detailing the use of the six elements of the business genome contain great ideas and tools for business developers. Kates also introduces a four-step process to use the framework. The process starts with simple questions:
- Are you at risk of becoming obsolete? Are you facing a shift in your market?
- Are you off-trend?
- Do you have a hunch that there's a new direction you should be pursuing?
One of the best ideas I got from the book is to use other industries as a source of new perspective. Often the signs of your future already exist in related and even unrelated industries. Influences from other industries are shaping customer requirements and that is happening at a faster pace than ever before.
Kates refers many times to the new role of the customer. The product and service discussion belongs to the customer now and it is often global. Manipulating customers to tell us what we want to hear does not translate into market leadership. Brands are defined by customers not by the companies that own them.
Companies face challenges internally as well. “Old school” leaders have learned that new generations have values, modes of communication, and beliefs that are foreign to them. Diversity is on the rise and employee motivation is not based on money alone.
"The age of innovation is here to stay, and the bar for inventiveness will only continue to get higher," Kates claims. However, she draws attention to a disturbing fact. Leaders might want their organizations to be more innovative, but often fill their top positions with non-innovators.
The book presents great case studies of the way genome thinking works. Most examples are from B2C companies, but many of the ideas are applicable to B2B. In fact, the book encourages cross-disciplinary thinking. "Don't think industry-specific, think focus-specific," she advises.
I second Seth Godin's praise for the book: "Every great strategic thinker uses the ideas in this book...but it took Andrea Kates to write them down for the rest of us." I'm certainly going to recommend Find Your Next to my clients!
