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The Profit Zone: How Strategic Business Design Will Lead You to Tomorrow's Profi |  |
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The Profit Zone: How Strategic Business Design Will Lead You to Tomorrow's Profi | |
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For years, the prevailing wisdom in business was that profitability was a byproduct of market share; get the biggest piece of the market and profit will surely follow. But in the last 10 years, this formula has time and again proved itself wrong. Companies such as DEC, GM, Ford, United Airlines, Kodak, and Sears have all demonstrated that market share does not necessarily lead to profitability.
The Profit Zone looks at how profit happens in today's customer-driven economy. The authors demonstrate why market share often leads to a "no-profit zone" and identify 22 profit models that have helped dozens of companies consistently make money. Included are in-depth looks at companies--Disney, GE, Microsoft, Intel, Charles Schwab--that have successfully redesigned their businesses and dramatically increased the value of their companies. Instead of focusing on market share, these innovators first looked at their customers' needs and how they could profit from fulfilling them. The book considers example after example of how the profit zone works, from Disney's theme parks to Schwab's marketing and selling of mutual funds. The final chapter is a handbook that allows managers to apply the ideas to their own companies. Clearly written and immensely practical, The Profit Zone deserves a place on every manager's bookshelf. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Slywotsky (Value Migration, McGraw-Hill, 1995) and Morrison, partners in a management consultancy, offer a number of insights into corporate strategy, presenting a theoretical framework that crosses a number of enterprise sectors and employs a number of specific strategies. The authors point out that market share, once the sine qua non, can no longer be equated with profitability. For the authors, profitability today comes when organizations move from a value chain based on core competencies to one based on consumer priorities. This work has a textbooklike feel; besides defining 22 specific profit models, it details how a number of successful companies from SMH (Swatch and Omega watches) to Coca-Cola and Microsoft employ strategies either singularly or in multiples. If this book has a drawback, it is that the authors were unable to capture fully the pain and hard work that came about in the development and execution of a strategy. Definitely worth considering for business collections and a good choice for general collections.?Steven Silkunas, SEPTA, Philadelphia
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Upside, Noah Shachtman
In The Profit Zone, Boston-based consultants Adrian Slywotzky and David J. Morrison deliver 22 organizational models for capturing profit. Then they reinforce their theoretical constructs with case studies of companies that are proven profit leaders. Some of their profile choices, such as Andy Grove and Bill Gates, are a tad obvious. But the authors offer some helpful insights into how corporate leaders structure their organizations for maximum profitability--especially when the authors deal with some of the lesser-known CEOs. Low-margin Swatches, for example, don't make much money for parent company SMH. But they build brand loyalty, which the company then reaps in the upper spectrum of the watch business. Overall, Slywotzky and Morrison have crafted an inventive framework for thinking about an organization's design and how to translate those thoughts into profitable realities. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
“Rarely—if ever—have any observers so skillfully dissected these executives’ strategies to create lessons that can be taught to anybody....The Profit Zone provides insights and lessons aplenty.”—John Byrne, BusinessWeek
“The Profit Zone is so insightful that most managers will pray that their competitors never read it.”—Richard D’Aveni, Amos Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, and author of Hypercompetition
“The Profit Zone could safely come with a guarantee that it would increase a company’s profit if management read it and acted on it.” —Philip Kotler, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Review
?Rarely?if ever?have any observers so skillfully dissected these executives? strategies to create lessons that can be taught to anybody....The Profit Zone provides insights and lessons aplenty.??John Byrne, BusinessWeek
?The Profit Zone is so insightful that most managers will pray that their competitors never read it.??Richard D?Aveni, Amos Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, and author of Hypercompetition
?The Profit Zone could safely come with a guarantee that it would increase a company?s profit if management read it and acted on it.? ?Philip Kotler, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Upside, Noah Shachtman
In The Profit Zone, Boston-based consultants Adrian Slywotzky and David J. Morrison deliver 22 organizational models for capturing profit. Then they reinforce their theoretical constructs with case studies of companies that are proven profit leaders. Some of their profile choices, such as Andy Grove and Bill Gates, are a tad obvious. But the authors offer some helpful insights into how corporate leaders structure their organizations for maximum profitability--especially when the authors deal with some of the lesser-known CEOs. Low-margin Swatches, for example, don't make much money for parent company SMH. But they build brand loyalty, which the company then reaps in the upper spectrum of the watch business. Overall, Slywotzky and Morrison have crafted an inventive framework for thinking about an organization's design and how to translate those thoughts into profitable realities. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
“Rarely—if ever—have any observers so skillfully dissected these executives’ strategies to create lessons that can be taught to anybody....The Profit Zone provides insights and lessons aplenty.”—John Byrne, BusinessWeek
“The Profit Zone is so insightful that most managers will pray that their competitors never read it.”—Richard D’Aveni, Amos Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, and author of Hypercompetition
“The Profit Zone could safely come with a guarantee that it would increase a company’s profit if management read it and acted on it.” —Philip Kotler, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Review
?Rarely?if ever?have any observers so skillfully dissected these executives? strategies to create lessons that can be taught to anybody....The Profit Zone provides insights and lessons aplenty.??John Byrne, BusinessWeek
?The Profit Zone is so insightful that most managers will pray that their competitors never read it.??Richard D?Aveni, Amos Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, and author of Hypercompetition
?The Profit Zone could safely come with a guarantee that it would increase a company?s profit if management read it and acted on it.? ?Philip Kotler, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
ADRIAN J. SLYWOTZKY is the author of Value Migration and the coauthor of The Profit Zone and Profit Patterns. Mr. Slywotzky is a graduate of Harvard College and has an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is vice president of Mercer Management Consulting and was recently selected by Industry Week as one of the six most influential people in management.
DAVID J. MORRISON is the coauthor of The Profit Zone and Profit Patterns. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he also holds an engineering degree from Princeton and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Mr. Morrison is vice chairman of Mercer Management Consulting and head of MercerDigital, the firm's e-commerce practice.
Chapter 1
Market share is Dead
The number one problem in business today is profitability. Where will you be allowed to make a profit in your industry? Where is the profit zone today? Where will it be tomorrow?
The profit zone is the area of your economic neighborhood where you are allowed to earn a profit. To reach and operate in the profit zone is the goal of every company.
You've been told how to get there. "Get high market share and the profit will follow." "Get high growth and your profits will expand." As a manager, you were schooled in how the pursuit of market share and growth automatically places you on a direct route to business success.
However, these formerly direct roads have become mazes riddled with traps, wrong turns, and dead ends. Many large companies, after taking the turn toward market share and volume growth, have only hit a profitless wall.
* * *
Market share was the grand old metric, the guiding light, the compass of the product-centric age. Companies focused on improving their product and building economies of scale. This product-centric thinking led to the battle cry: "Get more market share and the profit will follow."
In the past decade, some disturbing examples began to subvert the widespread faith in market share as the ultimate goal and guarantor of business success. Consider the experience of IBM, DEC, GM, Ford, United Airlines, US Steel, Kodak, Sears, and Kmart. All achieved leading market share positions: number one or number two in their industries. Yet all these market share leaders saw their profitability begin to erode during the 1980s. Their dominant share positions did not protect them. As profitability began to be detached from market share, shareholders began to suffer. Despite their strong market position, these market share leaders significantly underperformed the S&P 500 from 1985 to 1995.
Several of these companies have recently initiated radical changes in their business design. Their new focus on profit, not just market share, has led to dramatic rebounds in value. As a result, many other traditional market share leaders have been encouraged to reconsider the assumptions on which their business design is built.
As you think about your own business, ask yourself: Am I managing for market share, or for profit? Is the market share I own profitable and alive, or is it profitless and dead?
There are countless businesses with high market share but low profitability and low shareholder value. The Japanese have a lock on the memory chip market. USAir once dominated air travel in the eastern United States. Philips is a leader in consumer electronics. None of these companies has experienced significant value growth.
Nor are these isolated cases. The list goes on:
* A&P had a high share of grocery sales.
* Intel had a high share of memory chips.
* WordPerfect had a high share of word processor software.
* DEC had a high share of minicomputers.
* Kmart had a high share of the urban discount business.
Each company was a market share triumph and a profitability disaster. In a broad cross-section of high market share situations, the right economic response has been: "So what?"
Many companies simply hoped that profitability would return. Some managers inside the companies suspected that it would not, but were hesitant to bring that suspicion to the surface and open up a debate. How could they possibly argue against a high market share position?
Other managers, in their private, honest moments, knew that the profit would never come back but were hesitant to confront the issue openly, fearing that the organization's morale would plummet.
Intel was an exception. It was the one company on the above list that confronted the issue head-on. It had high market share in memory chips in 1985, but Intel's managers recognized that its market share was dead, valueless, and profitless. The 1980s game was over; it was time to build the company's next business design.
Companies like Intel force us to think harder about-or to completely rethink-market share as a predictor of profitability.
Am I Managing for Volume Growth or Value Growth?
"Be in high-growth markets." In the old economic order, in the age of market share, volume growth was a guarantor of success. Growth was what we were taught to pursue. It created higher profits for all, including market share laggards, companies with poor business designs, and companies that were poorly managed. A rising tide raised all boats. One manager articulated the classic view: "There are no management problems that volume growth can't solve. Even if we manage poorly, rising revenue helps cover the mistakes we made."
This maxim, too, has been shaken. Industry growth and a company's value (stock price) growth no longer have a one-to-one correlation. Fast-growing industries such as PC manufacturing, consumer electronics, telecommunications, and software have each produced scores of terminally unprofitable companies. By contrast, no-growth or low-growth industries have produced some of the most successful companies in the world. Coca-Cola achieved significant value growth in the low-growth beverage industry, as did General Electric (GE) in a collection of low-growth manufacturing industries, and Swatch in the low-growth watchmaking industry.
The two most valuable ideas in the old economic order, market share and growth, have become the two most dangerous ideas in the new order. To apply these ideas appropriately (and safely), you must understand the rise of no-profit zones in the economy.
No-Profit Zones
Companies used to be able to command a premium price by simply showing up. There were relatively few players in any competitive arena, and customers held little power. Over the past two decades, however, advances in industrial technology, innovation in business design, increases in global competition, and tremendous improvements in information technology have altered the game. In the face of intense competition, companies in many industries have leveraged efficiency gains and competed for market share by lowering price.
Simultaneously, information has become more accessible to customers, allowing them to conveniently shop for the best deals and the best prices. This forces all contenders to match price reductions or lose customers to a lower-priced competitor. It creates no-profit zones. In the old world, the rule was: Every industry makes money, and the market share leaders make the most money. There have always been one or two exceptions, such as agriculture or passenger rail travel, but they were few and far between.
In the past decade, the rule was broken. Today, no-profit zones are everywhere, and they are growing. The map of the economy is covered with more and larger patches of unprofitability. No-profit zones come in various forms. They can be a part of the value chain (e.g., distribution in computing); they can be a customer segment (e.g., the Medicaid segment in healthcare, or the grocery segment in carbonated beverages); they can be an entire industry (e.g., environmental remediation); they can be individual customers (e.g., Wal-Mart or other large, powerful buyers); or they can be entire business models (e.g., hub-and-spoke airlines, or integrated steel mills).
No-profit zones are the black holes of the business universe. In a physical black hole, light waves go in, but never come back out. In an economic black hole, investment dollars go in, but the profit dollars never come back out.
Paradoxically, the devout pursuit of market share may be the single greatest creator of no-profit zones in the economy.
Imagine an industry with ten competitors. By definition, their market shares add up to 100 percent. Read their strategic plans. They all plan to increase market share. Not by a little, but by a lot.
Add up the 5-year market share objectives, and you get a number that adds up to 150 to 170 percent of market share.
This, of course, cannot happen. It doesn't make sense; but even as you read this, it is going on around you-perhaps in your own industry or in your own company.
The vigorous pursuit of market share and the rise in customer power have driven profit from many activities and products, and even from entire industries. More and more no-profit zones have been created. Still, many companies continue to pursue a market share and volume growth strategy, trying to get a bigger piece of a pie that is losing all of its value.
A senior manager at an equipment manufacturer captured perfectly the spirit of market share myopia that dominated the thought processes, and the business press, in the age of market share:
We are all focused on market share, on units, units, units. Units sold vs. competitors'. Units sold this quarter vs. same quarter last year. We focus on every single point, or fraction of a point, of market share gained, or lost.
And it's not just our management team. It's our competitors' management teams. And it's the periodicals that follow our industry. The market share tables come out and we all follow them as closely as NBA standings.
All too often, the vigorous pursuit of market share is done at the expense of business design innovation. However, market share leadership in a no-profit zone, or high market share with the wrong business design, is more of a curse than a blessing.
Growth, with the Wrong Business Design, Destroys Value Faster
It is easy to understand the trap of market share and growth in a no-profit zone. It is more difficult to understand how growth in a thriving industry can be dangerous. Growth is important, but how growth is achieved is much more important.
There are three curses of growth. First, high growth with a bad business design destroys value faster. Witness the value destruction occurring in so many high-tech, high-growth industries today. Growth is attractive, but gro...
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