Marketbusters

Eight Marketbusting Moves to Exploit Emerging Opportunities

nge quite fundamentally. We don’t purport to offer a primer on scenario or trend analysis.13 Still, we suggest you give some thought to these questions:
TABLE 6-1
Tectonic Triggers

By colocating its facilities (funeral homes, florist shops, and so on), SCI shares personnel, vehicles, and preparation services, making it possible for it to operate more cost effectively than competitors having only one location

As with industry cycles, major shifts in industry constraints can create a host of second-order opportunities for those players having insight into the likely consequences. Changes in rules regarding national competition often create opportunities across many industries

nother. Although introducing flexibility can be expensive, it reduces the pressures that lead to much dysfunctional competitive behavior in cyclical or uneven-demand industries by limiting the sunk costs of overcapacity situations and allowing firms to capture the benefits of tight-capacity ones

With this information in mind, brainstorm answers to the following questions:
What bottlenecks are likely to occur in the cyclical peaks

What surpluses are likely to occur in the troughs?
Are there ways to end-run swings in the industry by positioning your firm to exploit bottlenecks during peak demand and to avoid troughs?
What second-order effects will cyclical swings have on the industry?
What second-order demands or surpluses will be created? For you? For members of the industry value chain, such as suppliers and distributors?
Are there opportunities to introduce innovations that mute or eliminate the impact of cycles

Move #23: Launch a Disruptive Response to Cycles
A final way to benefit from industry cycles is to introduce innovations that mute or eliminate the impact of cycles. This is a major driver behind the adoption of flexible manufacturing systems, in which entire factories can fairly readily be converted from the creation of one sort of output

Example: Capitalizing on Internet-Driven Demand for Packaging. New Jersey–based Sealed Air Corporation manufactures a wide range of food and protective packaging materials and systems that reach some 80 percent of the world’s population

Together with the peaking plants, many energy companies (including the now-discredited Enron) engaged in sophisticated forms of options-style contracting, giving them the capability to trade units of energy under various combinations of future circumstances