Zone to Win

The productivity zone is home to a host of enabling investments in shared services, all managed as cost centers. These include marketing, central engineering, technical support, manufacturing, supply chain, customer service, human resources, IT, legal, finance, and administration. Simply put, any function in the corporation that does not have direc

The question you want to answer at the outset, therefore, is whether you are being disrupted at the level of your infrastructure model, your operating model, or your business model.

It turns out, to disrupt someone else’s business, you have to add a net new line of business to your own portfolio.

1. Neutralize. 2. Optimize. 3. Differentiate.

The first is to help management teams in established franchises manage the resource allocation challenges of onboarding a new line of business while maintaining commitments to the existing ones. This we call playing zone offense.

In sum, the incubation zone represents precious real estate that should not be confused with experimentation with next-generation technologies and business models. That sort of thing can be done in a Skunk Works or a lab, a domain where learning is the prime objective and fast failure is actually a form of success.

The first principle of zone defense is that you must never attempt to disrupt yourself. As an established enterprise, your number-one asset is the inertial momentum of your installed customer base. Your number-two asset is an ecosystem of partners that makes its living adding value to your established offerings.

The transformation zone is the mechanism by which an enterprise can free its future from the pull of the past.

Incomplete alignment at the executive level. In this scenario one or more senior executives simply choose not to suit up, preferring instead to direct their energies toward efforts more specific to their own interests.