b. Prime ‘growth side’ initiatives of greatest value development potential are too numerous to describe in
detail here. Following are three of the more promising:
i- Short Life Cycle Advantage Products
This is a close relative to Boston Consulting Groups’ Low Cost Advantage strategy.
Short Life Cycle seeks to change target customer purchase behavior to the
company’s advantage. Observers often cite Dell’s commitment to ongoing low
price/high quality assembly. What those concerned with value covet is Dell’s ability to
disrupt rivals’ strategies by continually taking strategic leaps that cannot be matched.
ii- Antidote innovations
Implosion of the late Nineties Dot-Com mania in 2000 demonstrates the extreme
difficulty of generating significant demand in previously unknown fields. Antidote
innovations (Clark & Neill, 149) however, cancel out the attributes of an existing
product or service, thus responding to a market opportunity that already exists.
Example: Japanese systems for squelching mobile phone transmission signals in
museums, theatres.
iii- ‘Self-generics’ (pharmaceuticals)
‘Creative destruction’ is nothing more than a phrase until translated into a viable
commercial proposition. In Summer 2002, a software firm is introducing life cycle
management programs for pharmaceutical companies, which assist management in
identifying exactly the right time and manner to introduce their own generic
competition for existing patented formulas—rather than just letting the competition
steal the business.