SUSTAINABILITY they change their focus from the management of the short term and firefighting to ‘ eyes up and look out ’, so they ’ re able to better understand the marketplace . Why ? Because they ’ re in control , have stopped firefighting and therefore can spend more time understanding their markets , customers , consumers and competition .”
Snowden goes on to explain that this is phase one of business maturity on the Oliver Wight Maturity Model . Essentially what that means is having a managed environment . Phase two is a led
environment , where a company is moving more towards percentile perfection . Snowden estimates that around nine out of 10 businesses find themselves mired somewhere between phase one and phase two , and estimates that more than half of those are still in phase one .
If that ’ s the case , there is more to be done with regards to maximizing the opportunities to create value and build a value chain . Whether increasing numbers can successfully achieve this remains to be seen .
For a final thought , we ’ ll
go back to the original critical thinker , Porter . Speaking at an event at the Rotterdam School of Management , Erasmus University , in the Netherlands a couple of years ago , he said : “ Creating shared value means addressing societal needs and challenges through business itself , with a business model – and making a profit . In fact , some of the greatest opportunities for business are meeting the unmet needs of society .” Therein lies the challenge in the months and years to come .
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