We helped the market leader in specialty dairy to redefine and reposition itself for the future through the discovery of new opportunity areas and the development of innovation structures and culture to support them.
CHALLENGE:
The CEO of a market leader in specialty dairy was struggling to decide where to best invest for the future. The ingoing choices lay between geographic, product or channel expansion. Stratalis suggested that a strategic scenario approach supported by an exploration of existing and future demand patterns would help to clarify the decision.
DISCOVERY:
We started by establishing a baseline for the development of hypotheses; a robust quantitative analysis of the existing market, customer and industry data, to best understand what was “known” and a deep qualitative ethnographic analysis of the customer, consumer and distributor value chain to understand where the market was headed. This was supported by a competitive mapping to lay the foundation for trend and exogenous thinking development.
Stratalis then developed clusters of interconnected, mapped concepts by exploring macroeconomic, societal, technological, political and industry trends. These concepts served as pre-work for the strategic scenarios and as a foundation for spurring new, creative thinking within the executive team.
Through a multi-step strategic scenario process, we discovered that the opportunity for growth lay not in geography, product or channel expansion for the classic lines, but in the repositioning of a small, but growing part of the business away to a new, consumer-facing business model and a focus on direct to consumer branding. This re-shifting would allow the company to position itself for the future, while maintaining the significant cash flow and brand equity in the traditional lines.
This opportunity led to a new challenge. The client quickly realized that the new business model and concept innovations were attractive, but that the existing business could not operationally or culturally support the change. Stratalis then worked with the client team to develop a bifurcated “skunkworks” operating model that allowed the existing business to existing while a “company within a company” was created to drive the culture, tools and processes for the future.
We helped the client to define, develop and deliver the future operating model. This included:
- A Strategic Scenarios driven understanding of the opportunities, disruptions and trends that could impact their business and industry in the future.
- The creation of a new business strategy and corporate operating model.
- Concepts for the future, created by a multi-framework ideation process.
- The development of a go-to-market strategy and organizational redesign.
- High-level thinking on required innovation capabilities and operating model.
IMPACT
The client refocused their organization and supplemented their talent to develop the new business model for the future. The four developed strategic scenario “visions” are guiding decision making and strategic discussions within the organization. Initial wins indicate that the direction will be a successful one.