Brave Companies’ Survival Strategies

Source: blogs.havardbusiness.org

Freek Vermeulen, a professor of Strategy at the London Business School, writing in Harvard Business blog, says that he is often asked the question- “What can our company do to survive the downturn?”.   According to Vermeulen, the real answer, is “Not a lot”.

Vermeulen says the market is Darwinian: the strongest ones survive.  And he likens the economic downturn to Winter in Alaska.     Many  animals can survive the Spring, Summer and Fall in Alaska, but it  is not a great State to be in when the Winter comes.

But, the professor says there are a few survival techniques that firms can adopt, although they are not for the faint hearted.   These are:

(1) Open up
(2) Explore new sources of potential revenue
(3) Experiment with bottom up processes to generate such ideas and innovation

He gives an example of a London-based custom-made software company that did precisely that– opened up and organized bottom-up processes and tried something new.   And it worked.

Vermeulen reaffirms that it is a brave thing to do.  But he concludes with, “Finding the ’spare parts division’ among your customers might just see you through the downturn”.

Posted by Editor on Jun 30 2009. Filed under Orl/Orange County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.