Strategy

For international companies looking to diversify their manufacturing base and tap into a key emerging growth market, India presents an increasingly attractive opportunity.

Indian companies must bridge the gap between strategy and execution to achieve their performance improvement goals.

Indian cement manufacturers can counter the coming profit squeeze by focusing on three key levers of performance excellence.

The wide variety and complexity of new digital technologies means many Indian CEOs struggle to grasp their implications for the business. By changing the way they think about digital, leaders can start to seize the opportunities digital transformation presents. To do this, CEOs should ensure they regard digital as core rather than peripheral, view it through a business rather than technology lens, and think about it as evolving not static.

In today’s changed business world CEOs are confronted by five unique challenges. From leading in a VUCA environment to managing a new generation of millennials, CEO 3.0 is learning how to overcome them.

Peripheral vision is the ability to detect trends and weak signals beyond the current market boundaries. In a rapidly changing business environment it becomes a critical asset for strategic thinkers.

A new generation of CEOs are taking the helm and redefining what it means to lead in the 21st Century.

Increasing the number of options when taking a decision is proven to improve the success rate. Managers can expand their options and make better strategic decisions by using three innovative techniques. 1. Shift the frame of reference 2. Remove the preferred option 3. Divide and Multiply.

Although the market for healthcare services in India is large and growing - many hospitals remain unprofitable. To lay a strong economic foundation for new hospitals promoters should first articulate their vision and then put it to the test.

Indian apparel retailers have been overly focused on top-line revenue growth rather than expanding their bottom-line. Many apparel retailers have focused on increasing store count at the expense of increasing their profitability through higher sales and lower costs - which are vital for long-term success. By thinking rigorously and innovatively around the levers of sales and cost of goods sold, retailers can achieve the margin expansion necessary to sustain a winning position over the long-run.

In a concentrating FMCG market, tremendous pressure is put on outgrowing competitors. In this context, acquisitions are a major instrument of growth. To avoid costly mistakes, Indian FMCG leaders would benefit from putting strategy at the centre of their acquisition game plan.

Game theory is a powerful tool for analysing strategic interactions where decisions are interdependent. By identifying the right players and understanding their motivations, managers can generate the right options to set up the game and choose the optimum strategy.

Leaders should look for trends in the business environment to develop successful strategies and gain an advantage.

To develop effective business strategy amid a highly disruptive pandemic leaders must augment Porter's classic five forces framework to take into account the unique factors driving uncertainty in the current crisis.