Traditional Planning Dimensions

Deliberate:
Alternatives explicitly chosen in advance

Reactivity
Corporate Level:
Alternatives across industries and markets

Business Level: Level of Planning & control

Alternatives specific to an industry or market

Emergent:
Defined over time as operations unfold; tend to be implicit

Traditional Planning Dimensions: Market Scope & Product Uniqueness

Compete on your products price Compete on your products uniqueness

Go for a broad market

Strategies emphasize cost leadership (ex.: generic soft drinks)

Strategies emphasize general brand identity (ex.: Coca-Cola)

Go for a narrow market

Strategies emphasize affordability for a particular market (ex.: Ikea)

Strategies emphasize highly focused identity (ex.: Dr. Pepper)

What if Your Pet Rock Was the Key to the Future of Global Commerce?

An Overview of Strategy, Operational Modeling, and Uncertainty

(How strongly you want to emphasize accurate predictions about the future)

Emphasize rational planning:

Your goal: To reduce uncertainty without wasting money trying to control the uncontrollable. Put resources into systematic analyses, rational decision making models (as in Bazerman), trend analysis, macroeconomic modeling; do all of these better than the competition can. Invest in people and systems who can do this.

Emphasize visionary planning: Your goal: Build the business future you want. Put resources into creating demand; condition consumer preferences; articulate possible futures and fund the steps necessary to bring them into existence.

(How strongly you want to emphasize your ability to shape the future environment)

Emphasize transformation: Your goal: Prepare your organization to provide goods and services for needs and markets which do not yet exist. Put resources into national/international alliances, r&d, cooperative ventures, and alternative horizon planning; emphasize human capital (employee base, consumer, and population environment).

Emphasize adaptation/reaction: Your goal: To respond effectively to discontinuities as they enter your product frontier Put resources into highly efficient decision making in high pressure conditions; increase self-managing teams; develop capacities for structural change to meet emergent conditions.

Operational Modeling P.E.R.T.