I get a lot of requests to discuss further the application of intelligence analysis to business, so today I’ll discuss the uses and limitations of a common analytic technique. One tool that I teach at IE is the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH). ACH is an analytic tool originally developed by Richards J. Heuer at the CIA, [...]
Posts Tagged ‘disruption’
Framing: a key concept in the management of uncertainty and disruptions
Posted in Theory, tagged decision making, disruption, framing, GM, non-predictive strategy, Robert McNamara, Sarah Kaplan, sense making, strategy, turbulence, uncertainty, vietnam war on April 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The fog of war, a long 2003 interview of Robert S McNamara, shows that how one frames an issue has an influence on how a question can be solved. As soon as they got engaged in Vietnam, the US presented the conflict as a fight between freedom and communism. This happened in the late fifties, after China [...]
How firms fail to act on a disruption and fall as a result: the case of AT&T in 2005
Posted in Case study, Theory, tagged disruption, organizational decline, prediction, strategy on April 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A central tenet of innovation research is that firms often fail to act on a disruption that threatens their business, and falter as a result. A case in point is AT&T, the 120 year-old subsidiary of Bell Telephone Company, child of Alexander Graham Bell, an American icon. In 2005, AT&T was sold to SBC Communications. It was [...]
Crossing the Hudson to Spit: Moore’s Law, Steam Engines and Genetic Technology
Posted in Case study, Theory, tagged 23andMe, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, disruption, disruptive technology, DNA, genetics, Gordon Moore, Lloyd's, moore's law, Navigenics, New York State Law, non-predictive strategy, Panama Canal, Panamax, Royal Mail, steamship, strategy, Suez Canal, Tactics, Techno-Egotism, technology, Warren Buffet on April 20, 2011 | 6 Comments »
One of the features of our age is the idea that business suffers from a unique level of technological disruption, an attitude that I call Techno-Egotism. Businesspeople are told routinely that they operate in an era of “unprecedented” technological change; as a result, they feel very Modern (and rather sorry for themselves). They also, however, [...]
The loss of creative capacity as a source of organizational decline
Posted in Theory, tagged Arnold J Toynbee, clayton christensen, disruption, Henry Mintzberg, organizational breakdown, organizational decline on April 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
An interesting way to think about how organizations deal with disruptions in their environment, and what ultimately causes their demise, is to consider the thesis of Arnold J Toynbee on the decline of civilizations and apply it to the world of organizations. Toynbee is the author of “A study in history“, the landmark book on the [...]
The use of history for business decision makers: Neustadt and May’s analogs framework
Posted in Methodology & Tools, tagged decision making, disruption, Ernest R May, Richard E Neustadt, strategy, uncertainty, Use of analogs, Use of history on April 5, 2011 | 2 Comments »
One of the characteristics of a disruption is that one has to deal with a new situation for the first time. Hence, almost by definition, one doesn’t have any prior experience to draw upon, and often no existing framework to use. Does that mean that radically new situations must be dealt with without referring to [...]
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