11/11/10 - Cancelled
Mark Johnson
Seizing the White Space
Kodak invents digital photography in 1975 but doesn’t successfully capitalize on its invention for decades. Xerox famously devises the mouse, the laser printer, and the graphical user interface but fails to commercialize any of them. The $2 billion Digital Equipment Corp. spends developing a personal computer turns out to be too little, too late.
What makes opportunities like these so difficult to grasp?
The reason is that they often require companies to move far beyond their core into uncharted territory -- into their white space. That’s a scary place, one where many companies’ experience is (as one CEO put it) “unblemished by success.” But if the danger is all too obvious, its causes are not.
The white space is hard to navigate not because it’s uncharted but because so many companies try to go there with the wrong map … their existing business model.
Among the things you will learn:
More about Seizing the White Space
Johnson will start with with an eminently practical business model framework identifying the four fundamental building blocks that make your business model work:
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The customer value proposition that fulfills an important job a real customer needs to do in a better way than current alternatives do.
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The profit formula that lays out how your company makes money delivering the value proposition.
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The key resources that value proposition requires.
- The key processes needed to deliver it.
He will then explore the circumstances when a new business model might be needed:
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To fulfill unmet customer jobs in your current market.
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To serve entirely new customers in new markets.
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Or to respond to tectonic shifts in market demand, government policy, and technological capabilities that transform entire industries.
He will conclude by laying out a structured process for designing a new business model and developing it into profitable and thriving enterprise.
More about Mark Johnson
Mark Johnson is chairman of Innosight, a strategic innovation consulting and investing company with offices in Massachusetts, Singapore, and India, which he cofounded with Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen. He has consulted to Global 1000 and start-up companies in a wide range of industries—including health care, aerospace/defense, enterprise IT, energy, automotive, and consumer packaged goods—and has advised Singapore’s government on innovation and entrepreneurship.
He received an MBA from Harvard Business School, a master’s degree in civil engineering and engineering mechanics from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree with distinction in aerospace engineering from the United States Naval Academy. He currently serves on the board of the U.S. Naval Institute.