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Corporate & Business Development

Hasten Change, Shape Your Industry

While many high-tech firms use traditional approaches to strategy, and some even succeed in this way, Harbor has seen over and over than the biggest winners are those that make aggressive moves to control the growth and shape of their competitive arenas. In chemistry, a catalyst is an agent that speeds the chemical reaction that produces a desired compound. Similarly, in business a catalytic strategy is one that hastens the arrival of a desired end result. In business, those results involve a “value compound,” a unique combination of technological and business elements which, when offered to customers, results in accelerated market penetration, value chain advantage, or advantageous market structure.  Of course, simply “rowing harder” may hasten the arrival of this state somewhat. But in business as in chemistry, catalysis is in essence the process of sneaking around a barrier that others are struggling to climb, and thereby arriving at the destination much more quickly. In other words, it mean following an entirely new path.  The catalyst itself may come from an acquisition or creative alliance whose introduction into the business situation creates the shortcut to an advantageous structuring of one’s competitive arena.  Our research suggests that acquisition-led strategies can be value-creating in any industry, and are essential in some to achieve a truly catalytic impact.

In our experience, the best acquirers design acquisitive growth programs that are explicitly driven by their growth strategy, in which they continuously screen chosen markets for opportunities that will deliver their strategies at a faster and more valuable rate than organic growth alone. Consequently, they have the discipline to walk away from deals they cannot comfortably create value from. But, they also have the skills to maximize the value of the deals they do make. In practice, this means they are able to conserve the value of both base businesses, capture the value of the synergies behind the acquisition case and create new value through coherent strategic and organizational integration that ensures a "merger of minds" on the top management team.


We help companies build successful acquisitive growth programs as well as deliver value from individual deals. Our approach focuses on the highest-value strategic, financial and organizational decisions that define the program, the deal and the integration. The benefits of our approach include:

  • Acquisitive growth programs that are linked to catalyitc growth strategies
  • A richer pipeline and higher throughput of value-creating acquisitions
  • Lower risk of overpaying for the wrong companies
  • Accelerated delivery of value creation from individual acquisitions
  • Strategic and organizational integration programs that gear the new entity to sustainable growth
  • Deeper organizational capabilities to become a successful serial acquirer
   

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