Article Review Session

Charting Your Company’s Future

BY:- W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne
Published On- June 2002

Presented By:-
Durgadatta Dash (22073).
Authors

W. Chan Kim

Professor of Strategy and International Management

The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson
Chaired Professor of International Management
Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy
Institute

Renee Mauborgne
Affiliate Professor of Strategy
The INSEAD Distinguished Fellow of Strategy and
International Management
Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy
Institute
Main Theme
This article is mainly a blueprint for making a visual chart of a company’s strategy. The
authors believe that seeing a visual chart is vital for easy communication of strategic plans
and company goals. This chart is known as a strategy canvas.
Strategy Canvas has three main objectives :
1st : Displays the present and tries to predict future factors that affect competition in an
industry thereby showing the industry’s strategic profile.
2nd: Presents the strategic factors that are present and that potential competitors invest in,
thus giving their strategic profile.
3rd : Represents the value curve showing which factors of competition the company
invests in currently and may invest in future.

This value curve is the basic component of the strategy canvas.

Author’s View:

A good strategy has three qualities :

1.Focus (friendly service, speed & frequent point to point dep.)

2.Divergence

3.A compelling tag line

Drawing Strategic Canvas :
Managers are good enough in their respective departments but most of them fail to give the
overall view.
Kim and Mauborgne indicate that there are four steps involved in visualizing strategy:

1.Visual awakening
2.Visual exploration
3.Visual strategy fair
4.Visual communication.
 Contd.
1. Visual Awakening: Compare your business with your competitors’ by drawing your “as is”
strategy picture and see where your strategy needs to change.
2. Visual Exploration: Go into the field to: discover the adoption hurdles for noncustomers, observe
the distinctive advantages of alternative products and services and see which factors you should
eliminate, create, or change.
3. Visual strategy fair: Draw your “to be” strategy canvases based on insights from field observations.
Get feedback on alternative strategy pictures from customers, lost customers, competitors’
customers, and noncustomers. Use those feedback to build the best “to be” strategy.
4. Visual communication: Distribute your before-and-after strategic profiles on one page for easy
comparison. Support only those projects and operational moves that allow your company to close the
gaps to actualize the new strategy.
Example: Southwest Airlines of Short-Haul Airline Industry
Example: European Financial Services(EFS)
Our Evaluation

• The actual point of the entire article is to stress the importance of visual services in
deciding what the current corporate strategy is and describing that idea to the individuals
in the organization.
• The article suggests that the best method of communicating a new strategy is by
distributing before-and-after strategic profiles on one page for easy comparison.
• This makes it easier to see which new projects to support in the course of business.
Conclusion
Things are easier to see when there is a picture right in front of you.
This article gives an action plan for developing a better visualization of the big picture
behind the company’s strategy.
Thank You..