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Industry Perspectives
Read more thought leadership from Booz & Company on the application of Capabilities-Driven Strategy across an array of industries and functions.
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Next-Generation Affordability in Aerospace and Defense: Transforming Capabilities and Costs |
The steady decrease in U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) investment spending will continue for the foreseeable future. To better compete in this new environment, traditional companies should look beyond simple cost-cutting measures to a more comprehensive “next-generation affordability” approach that transforms cost structures and refocuses capabilities on the new market requirements. |
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Cut Costs and Get Agile: U.S. Defense Industry Faces Low-Rate, Low-Cost Production |
Traditional defense manufacturers are facing a period of change that, if poorly navigated, could severely cripple their competitiveness and even threaten their very existence. Success in today’s defense market will require (1) understanding and investing in new capabilities; (2) attacking structural costs; and (3) advancing systemic processes. |
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Capabilities-Driven Strategy for Defense: Asserting Your Right to Win in an Evolving Market |
A declining defense budget in the United States and a shift in acquisition philosophy by the Pentagon have fundamentally altered the competitive landscape for the defense industry. Defense companies can assert their “right to win” in the evolving defense market using one of a variety of strategic models — well established, relatively new, or as yet undiscovered — but this requires focusing their resources on a chosen “way to play”. |
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Consumer Packaged Goods: Escaping the Consolidation Mentality (strategy+business) |
Holding fast to the two myths that have long dominated strategy in consumer-oriented industries — that bigger companies win, and that one or two players control every product category — can get a firm into trouble. A capabilities-driven strategy can provide a better path to profit. |
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M&A in the New CPG Strategy (strategy+business) |
For consumer products companies seeking acquisition targets, the game-changing deals are those that bring more coherence. |
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Restructuring in Consumer Products: Pursuit of Coherence Drives M&A Agendas |
The CPG industry is poised for the next wave of portfolio shuffling. Leading companies will increasingly build their product offerings around distinctive capabilities systems, which will lead to more asset swapping and M&A activity as brands migrate to those environments in which they will thrive. |
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Does Size Matter? Rethinking the Importance of Scale in Consumer Goods Companies |
Over the last decade, the best CPG industry performers have been small companies with relatively narrow product portfolios supported by three to six differentiated capabilities. These firms exhibit coherence, which allows them to be efficient in their activities, disciplined about their portfolios, and unmatched at the capabilities that matter most to customers. |
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Is Category Consolidation Inevitable? Shaping Category Dynamics to Win in CPG |
Contrary to conventional wisdom, a great many CPG categories are fragmenting instead of consolidating. For executives and brand managers, the key is understanding the dynamics of the category they’re in, assessing whether they can change those dynamics, and figuring out the capabilities they need to do so. |
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Reinventing Retail: A New Path to Profitable Growth |
Coming out of one of the worst downturns in history, many retailers have become skilled at cutting costs fast. But to achieve lasting advantage in an increasingly demanding industry, retailers need to step up their game and create operating models that maximize efficiency and effectiveness on a sustainable basis. Greater efficiency will make room for the kind of investment that builds lasting competitive advantages, while improved effectiveness will help retailers meet their strategic goals. |
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Strategic Opportunities for Asset Managers in U.S. Liability-Driven Investing |
Booz & Company sees significant opportunities for U.S. asset managers seeking to enter the liability-driven investing (LDI) space, which is growing steadily. There are a number of ways to play in this market. Asset managers will need to reconfigure existing functions and build new capabilities specifically to meet the needs of LDI mandates. |
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Opportunity amid Turmoil in Asset Management: Spotlight on Business Model and Capabilities |
Asset management is facing a challenging and turbulent period. In this unsettling landscape, two characteristics are critical for success in asset management firms: a clear business model, and a robust set of underlying capabilities that go well beyond having a strong investment management team. |
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Capturing Growth in U.S. Retail Banking: Building a Sustainable Right to Win |
The retail banking industry faces significant growth challenges. In this highly competitive and difficult environment, banks that earn the right to win will be those that make a clear choice about their way to play and then develop a distinct and powerful capabilities system that supports it. |
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Capabilities-Driven Strategy in Financial Services: The Successful Case of a Private Banking Unit |
The experiences of the private banking unit within a large global financial-services firm illustrate the systematic effort required to succeed with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy. |
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Future of Banking: Reappraising Core Capabilities after the Crisis |
For all the chaos in the global banking sector since mid-2007, the purpose of banking, the needs of customers, and the core capabilities that drive the strategies of the most successful banks have endured. What has changed is the environment in which banks operate and compete. If banks hope to survive and prosper, they need to create the essential organizational capabilities for the post-crisis era. |
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Reclaiming Lost Medical Value: Three Models for Healthcare Change |
Rising costs are forcing the entire U.S. healthcare industry to find ways to unlock and enhance medical value by delivering higher-quality, more affordable care to empowered and engaged consumers. To create meaningful change, the system needs to adopt approaches that are holistic and highly collaborative, bringing together the distinct capabilities of payors, hospitals, and physicians. This Perspective outlines three models — population care, healthcare products, and focused transformation — that address the issue of reclaiming lost medical value in a comprehensive and sustainable way. |
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Accountable Care Organizations: The New Player in the Health-Reform Landscape |
To assist health plans as they consider and pursue Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), Booz & Company conducted extensive research, modeling, and in-depth market interviews. This Perspective reports Booz & Company’s findings on the emerging ACO landscape, including an assessment of the fast-evolving ACO marketplace and an analysis of the impact of ACOs on payors and providers — as well as competitive implications and capability recommendations for payors. |
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Post-Reform Calculus for Health Plans: Choosing a Business Model That Delivers the Right to Win |
Healthcare plans must recognize that they are at a historic crossroads and start to prepare for a radically different future in which no incumbent has a guaranteed right to win.Overall, the marching order for big incumbents will be to develop a coherent strategy that will make them nimbler and more relevant. The time to kick-start this strategy is now. |
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A Challenging Mandate for Ministries of Finance: How the Right Capabilities Can Address Post-crisis Priorities |
The global financial crisis has ushered in a new era for ministries of finance worldwide. These bodies now have a far greater slate of responsibilities. They must do more, and solve more complex problems, than at any time in recent economic history. A survey of more than 60 finance ministers and senior staff at those ministries, along with other economic thought leaders, indicates that new capabilities are needed to address these challenges. |
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The Future of Telecom Operators: Capabilities for Rapid Change |
Telecom operators must move away from the rigid vertical structures that were suited to monopolistic markets, and into business models that cut across traditional operators’ boundaries and recognize the shared opportunities of hyper-competitive markets. These new business models must be built on a foundational set of capabilities powerful enough to differentiate them from competitors. |
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Capabilities-Driven Strategy: Redefining Utility Leadership for a New Environment |
A new crop of "architect CEOs" in the utilities industry are recognizing the need to realign their companies' capabilities and performance models with the new market realities, to both meet new demands and take advantage of emerging opportunities in those markets. |
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Business Value Realization in Transformation Programs: Improving User Adoption of New Capabilities |
Many business transformation programs entail developing new capabilities that have a substantial IT component. A critical success factor for the transformation program is the adoption of the new capabilities (including technology) by users. A business value realization (BVR) program preps users to accept, absorb, and adopt new capabilities, and ensures management understands and supports the level and type of preparation that’s needed. |
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Capabilities and Coherence: Delivering Business Value Through IT |
CIOs have an indispensable role to play in organizations adopting a Capabilities-Driven Strategy, both in helping to define corporate capabilities and strategies and in ensuring that IT is aligned with them. |
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Road Map to Relevance (strategy+business) |
How a capabilities-driven information technology strategy can help differentiate your company. |
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The Global Innovation 1000: How the Top Innovators Keep Winning (strategy+business) |
According to Booz & Company’s annual study of R&D spending, succeeding at innovation requires two key elements: a focused set of innovation capabilities that is carefully tuned to a company’s innovation strategy and the ability to align the innovation strategy with overall corporate strategy. |
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Innovation Strategy Profiler |
What's your innovation strategy? Use this tool to determine which capabilities your company needs to succeed as a top innovator. |
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A Marketing Identity Check: Differentiated Capabilities Earn the “Right to Win” |
Booz & Company, Korn/Ferry International, and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recently conducted a survey of 350 senior marketing professionals across many industries to find out how the role of marketing is evolving. This Leading Research presents the findings and our analysis. |
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The Capabilities Premium in M&A (strategy+business) |
A new study of inorganic growth shows that deals made to enhance or leverage the things that companies do well consistently outperform others. |
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Making the Most of M&A (strategy+business) |
Mergers and acquisitions are becoming more critical — and more perilous — than ever. You can build your capabilities, even in the midst of turmoil. |
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The Capable Supply Chain: Linked with Strategy for Superior Performance |
Booz & Company has developed a profiler that lets companies test the coherence of their supply chain capabilities against their defined "way to play" to ensure sufficient alignment for premium returns. And when alignment is lacking, the profiler provides customized recommendations for improvement. |
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Supply Chain Capabilities Profiler |
What are your supply chain’s strengths and how do they fit your way to play? Use this tool to learn what strategic supply chain decisions will generate a coherence premium. |
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The Next Winning Move in Private Equity (strategy+business) |
Private equity firms are searching for strategies to revitalize their business, with some moving to public ownership, and some diversifying away from their core business of leveraged buyouts (LBOs). What they most need to do, however, is to restore the LBO to its former position as a driver of superior returns. To do that, they must enhance their ability to spur organic growth in their portfolio companies, which will require adding new capabilities at the PE firms themselves. |
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Successful Strategic Planning (strategy+business) |
In times of great uncertainty, strategic planning must shift from a bureaucratic, linear process to a more targeted approach that is both analytic and creative and moves your firm toward coherence. |
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Going for Green: A Capabilities-Driven Approach to Environmental Opportunity |
This "Perspective" Viewpoint describes three increasingly ambitious strategic levels of green that companies can pursue: Responsible Green strategies seek to meet the sustainability demands of key stakeholders, such as trade customers and regulators, and maintain the company's competitive position; Efficient Green strategies pursue operational efficiency and cost competitiveness through environmental initiatives; and Differentiated Green strategies adopt sustainability as the source of long-term business value and enhanced market share. |
