Strategy, Innovation & The Art of Navigation takes a tour through ten stories from which we can gain important insights into strategy, leadership and teamwork, relevant to any industry:
1. Kitty Hawk: The Gale of Creative Destruction - how industries are formed, evolve and displaced by new innovation. 2. The 50-60 Club: Longevity & Mortality - The surprisingly short lives of even the world’s largest corporations. 3. The 1990’s Air Fare Wars: Destructive Rivalry - Supply-Demand, Industry Analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, Core Competence.
4. Moonshots- JFK, the power of backcasting, picking a future destination and then working out how to get there. 5. KAL007 and GPS: Strategic Navigation - The difference between flight planning and navigation; A Silicon Valley startup. 6. Igor Ansoff: Scope and Vectors for Growth - Squeezing more out of the core, pursuing market adjacencies and growth. 7. Jeppesen: Innovation & Transformation - The Explore-Exploit dilemma, ambidextrous organizations and ‘Kodak moments’. 8. Gates’ 1985 Letter to Sculley: Network Effects - The ‘Sixth Force’, complementors, network effects and antitrust actions. 9.Tenerife & Challenger: Psychological Safety - The fundamental importance of psychological safety in critical decision making. 10. Airbus, Boeing & the VLA: Game Theory - The power of cognitive empathy, the application of game theory to business. In the birth and evolution of a new industry, in the lifecycles of the companies that came, went and survived within it, in the boom-and-bust business cycles and in the dynamics of competition between them are to be found stories, lessons and patterns that transcend industries and, to a large extent, time. Later, aerospace played a role in the formation of what became Silicon Valley, from the history of which we can learn a great deal about innovation, entrepreneurship and the lifecycles of companies and industries. And, in the century since the inception of flight, the rise of the business school and the development of economic theory together provide a third, research based, historical thread from which to gain insights into business strategy. Drawing on all of these historical threads, our flight takes a route through this selection of ten stories and the enduring strategic leadership insights we can gain from them.
