Strategy

Our clients often need to respond quickly to changes in their competitive arena, but the best course of action isn't always clear, and conventional wisdom is not always the correct response.  Many companies naturally respond to disruptive environments by trying to slow the world down in an attempt to understand and control it. They typically force partners into inflexible agreements, acquire competitors just to remove them as threats, and approach new markets with old methods. These actions, while seemingly logical, are often at odds with effective strategy in the evolving "networked" world. The most successful companies actually accelerate the development of their markets and use the resulting change and complexity to their advantage. 

Getting There First: Catalytic Strategy

At Harbor we refer to this market approach as Catalytic Strategy. Catalytic strategies don’t just hasten market development, but help structure markets and competitive environments to give distinct advantages to the business innovator who moves first.  Unfortunately, at most companies conventional planning and decision-making methods do not promote the development of catalytic strategies. Too often, traditional planning leads managers directly into the traps they seek to avoid. Catalytic Strategy is demonstrated when a firm envisions an industry future favorable to itself, identifies barriers to the creation of that future, and then overcomes the barriers through a set of actions that hasten the desired end-state.  Harbor has worked with and extensively studied the best technology companies to discern what their winning strategies have in common. We have used these experiences to design methods that, far more than traditional planning processes, result in similarly powerful strategies.

Why work with us?  The most valuable service that Harbor provides is to work with clients through structured and applied methods to generate innovative ideas and then gather, distill and analyze relevant data and information in order to develop clear, actionable recommendations. The result? Increased certainty around vital new business  creation and development decisions.