A Purpose Leader’s Declaration of Independence - Strategize from the Core & Innovate with the Edge!

With this weekend happen to be the July 4th weekend – we didn’t feel like writing a blog with a serious strategic content - and so, started searching for a topic – that, not only would lighten up the moment, but also, would re-kindle the independence spirit within all of us. It so happened that the topic of “declaration of independence” came to our mind - and to our utter amazement, we quickly learned that the dilemma that drove the founding fathers to come up with their five part manifesto – seem to be very similar to the “core vs. edge dilemma" that is being faced by most corporations today – and rightfully so, it ebbed up our curiosity, and so, we decided to learn more!

As it turns out, the 5C’s our Purpose Driven Leadership (PDL©) framework (as listed below), in conjunction with our strategic planning framework called Portfolio-Thread View (PTV©), seem to have a perfect answer for this core vs. edge dilemma, and so, we decided to summarize our answer, in the same format of the declaration of independence, - with the same language tone of the founding fathers, yet augmented by the tenor of our own PDL©/PTV© frameworks! We hope it lightens up your spirit– as we celebrate Independence Day this weekend!

1. The INTRODUCTION – Setting the new vision with the right tone of "CONFIDENCE”

When the course of “business as usual” is no longer an accepted norm, it becomes imperative for the stakeholders to redefine (reset?) the meaning of their core businesses (and its associated value), which have connected them with one another for so long, so that, they can embrace the truth behind their edge vision (e.g. Purpose Innovation driven VizPlanet©), the separate and yet almost equal planet station, to which the nature’s principles and God’s principles entitle them, driven by the tenets of the free market capitalism, that compels them, not only to “strategize from the core”, by declaring the causes behind their purpose value chain, but also, impels them to “innovate with the edge” with an edge platform like VizPlanet©, as depicted in the picture above!

2. The PREAMBLE – Renewing the “COMMITMENT” for the new vision

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all stakeholders (i.e. core and edge) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of purpose and profit. Those to secure these rights are called upon to rise among the stakeholders, as purpose innovators, deriving their inspiration from their creator and founding fathers!

3. The INDICTMENT – Establishing the “CONTEXT” for the new vision by identifying risks and returns

That whenever, any form of this edge vision, start cannibalizing their core, it is the right of the leaders to seize the moment, and mitigate those risks by exploring alternative paths of returns (or execution), including, but not limited to the option of spinning off a new start-up entity called “Edge Inc”, by laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such a form, as to them shall seem most likely to derive their collective purpose and profitability from their parent core.

4. The DENUNCIATION – Building the case for forming a new entity, with the right CALIBER of purpose leaders!

While self cannibalization of the core in some cases is a real thing, it is definitely not a compelling reason to quench the edge endeavor (as the saying goes, if we don’t eat our own lunch, someone else will!) – and so, edge, would like to peacefully work things out, as edge and core at the end of the day are still conjoined cousins (as they need each other), and so, hereby, the edge constituents, affirm and appeal to the open minded among the core, to accommodate edge’s aspirations and agree to co-exist as sister concerns, under the larger purpose holding umbrella!

5. The CONCLUSION– Closing the deal with the CALL-TO-ACTION

That, these united edge colonies, also envision the need to change the strategy and structure of the holding corporation, so that they can officially declare the existence of “Edge Inc” and of their right ought to be free and Independent operating entity; that they are absolved from the day to day oppression of the core, yet operating as conjoined cousins, to win the competition collectively and decisively, united by the larger purpose, that comes from their creator and founding fathers!


Editor/author’s closing comments:

While "Strategize From the Core and Innovate with the Edge" being the key strategic principle promoted within our blog today, by no means, we are suggesting that forming “edge Inc” is the only option to implement that principle , rather we suggest that, it is one of the most viable options available to large corporations - as history has proven again and again that “moving the needle” with the edge vision, especially within a large established core business, is not an easy thing.

On a side note - one of our business partners – after reading the draft version of the article – was quiet impressed with our timely “declaration of independence metaphor” and jokingly summarized the article with the following mapping. Although we did not mean it that way, it turned out to be that way, and so, we let you be the judge!

• 17-20th century British Empire –> depicting the Core or “business as usual”


• All former British Commonwealth colonies led by USA –> depicting the Edge type disruptive innovation businesses (e.g. our purpose innovation enabled VizPlanet© platform)


• Founding Fathers –> depicting the Overarching Board and Senior Leaders


• Declaration of Independence –> depicting the Edge manifesto with a proposal to form Edge Inc.


• Creator –> depicting the Common Purpose or a holding company uniting both core and edge under a common umbrella!

With all due respect, most former British colonies including USA, are still thankful to the British Empire –as they all have derived some of their foundational strengths from Great Britain, in spite of the shortcomings, that came along with the colonization. In other words, a former colony like USA cannot be the super power today, had it not derived some of its core strengths from the British Empire. Similarly, some of the emerging economic powers of today, were also, once colonies of British Empire- and in a way - they also have derived some of their foundational strengths from the British Empire, in spite of the shortcomings of colonization. The most notable one being the English language– which has become the link language for the whole world! In closing – no matter how we slice it, whether it is core or edge, we all need each other – as world is becoming smaller and smaller every day!

Wish you all a happy July 4th!

Purpose Landing on the VizPlanet© - Our Generation’s Sputnik Moment?

Courtesy: Google images customized within our prototype implementation

With our VizPlanet© article, that is being posted within the Management Innovation Exchange (MIX) site, generating some interesting follow-up questions within the MIX community, one of our readers, suggested that we cross-post it, within our blog to keep that momentum going. As it turns out, some of those questions, in fact, strengthen the case of our article, and so, we decided to incorporate them within our blog today. The most notable question being – is there a burning platform to call this revolutionary VizPlanet© idea, as our Generation’s Sputnik Moment?

The Answer is …..

The short answer is YES! Having said that, as we started thinking about the best way to present the compelling case for this burning platform – a key insight came to our mind – i.e. an insight from an article by Jared Diamond, assessing the impact of the increased rate of consumption happening among world’s population- as summarized in the picture below.


What does this insight tell us? The middle class boom of the developing world (more specifically the BRIC countries), that is being used by the western multi nationals, as the burning platform for their emerging market growth strategy, eventually might come back, and start even impacting their capital raising ability in the long run– especially, when those middle class populations, start competing for the limited set of natural resources, that are currently being consumed by their western counter parts, with a GH emission inequality ratio of 32:1. What do we mean by that? As it turns out, the emerging market growth strategies of most western multinationals, in a way, are a paradox because - on one hand, these corporations are counting on capitalizing the middle class boom happening within the developing world, to sustain and justify their double digit growth for the next 10 years or so - and, on the other hand, the same boom, eventually will end up increasing the competition for the limited natural resources (or cost of capital in financial terms)- and might even start reducing (or hurting) the quality of life, that is being enjoyed by all of us, perhaps not today, but definitely 10-25 years from now. In other words, no matter how we slice it, our planet’s current resource consumption pattern or lifestyle, is not at all sustainable and so, it is a no-win value proposition, for both the developed and developing world, in the long run.

As we present this argument, I hear someone pointing us to the progress we have made so far on developing those innovative sustainability solutions/strategies to reduce the carbon footprint (& hence reducing the resource uses) along with those efficient global capital/capability management strategies that have been instituted by most multinational corporations. While we don’t disagree with the intent and merits of any those strategies - most of those sustainability solutions/strategies, however, are still being centered around –just changing our personal choices, to reduce the carbon footprint, as opposed to changing our lifestyles in en-masse , before changing those personal choices. In other words, if we may use Prof. Clayton Christensen’s style of writing – most of our current sustainability solutions are stuck at the wrong side of the fork!

The root cause being …..

While we agree, that it is the right thing to do, to develop these innovative sustainability solutions (e.g. energy star programs etc.) to help reduce the carbon footprint at the personal/household/business levels, in our humble opinion, these solutions, do not fix the root cause of the issue i.e. -

• "With urbanization happening at a faster rate than ever across the globe, especially, in the last decade or so - more and more percentage of consumers (& corporations) are continuing to consume and compete for the limited set of natural resources to sustain their current life style (& profit margins) within the natural realm, in spite of a compelling alternative purpose/virtual lifestyle, available for them within the virtual realm, in a fraction of cost, providing almost the same “look and feel” type of experience, emitting just a fractional percentage of the greenhouse gases.”

One might wonder why we have not been able to fix this root cause, in its totality so far! The reason, in our humble opinion, is the lack of a compelling motivation (or incentive mechanism) on the part of both consumers and corporations, to embrace the alternative purpose/virtual lifestyle - and rightfully so, we propose a “lifestyle-changing”, root cause fixing, systemic approach, that MOTIVATES both consumers and corporations alike, to come together under a Virtual Community Environment(VCE, henceforth pronounced as Viz), that is bounded together by a powerful “Purpose Score driven, Virtual Reality/Avatar/3D/Interactive Gaming technologies/Tele-Metry based VizPlanet© Platform”, as outlined in the picture above, (that was put together as part of our recent prototype implementation), that inherently compels all parties (specifically corporations) to stretch their value chain into the VizPlanet© realm, thus making it possible for them to provide value-add purpose bundles of products and services with relatively less number of resources. Not only that - this type of a stretched value chain, apart from increasing corporations’ economies of scale & scope benefits, also, helps us to preserve God given, limited natural resources for the benefit of the future generation. In other words – it is all about us, changing our life style and making a conscious mindset shift, where possible, to consume certain services within the virtual realm (thus reducing the carbon footprint in larger percentages), as opposed to continuing our current lifestyle within the natural realm.

Resource Pool Portfolio (RPP) Framework – to help prioritize the VizPlanet© Services

To facilitate such a large scale sustainability driven purpose movement, we have developed a Resource Pool Portfolio (RPP) framework by grouping the high value resource consumption assets of our planet into 25 resource consumption buckets, and let the framework itself, to identify the top 5 high potential candidate buckets of services (as numbered in the picture below) that can be slowly moved from natural realm into the virtual realm, as promoted by our earlier purpose innovation platform concept.

Simply put, those purpose consumers (with a history of consuming/applying H&W P&S’s, consuming/reducing green energies, thus leading a purpose lifestyle, in body-soul-spirit dimensions with a higher purpose scores), who choose to consume all of their commerce and content services, using our VizPlanet© Platform, not only get a better value for themselves, but also, facilitate the noble cause of reducing the natural resource consumption rate by a substantial percentage. In other words, VizPlanet© platform, over a period of time, reduces the carbon footprint, by a substantial percentage (& hence operating cost as well) as captured in the three KPI’s of the RPP framework, thus increasing the profit margins of corporations as well.
Solution Options within the VizPlanet© Platform
With that said, the sustainable long term question that needs to be solved within the purpose reform context is – How do we change our lifestyle by resetting planet’s end-to-end resource consumption pattern and by moving some or all of the resource intensive commerce/content services from natural realm into the virtual realm – using one of the five options identified below

1. Brick and mortar platform along with a purpose score enabled vanilla online channel (current model with just addition of purpose scores based content and commerce services bundles).


2. Brick and mortar platform with a purpose score enabled vanilla online channel along with a third option of Purpose Score based VizPlanet© Platform in asynchronous mode i.e. near real time synchronization of SKU’s and content.


3. Brick and mortar platform with a purpose score enabled vanilla online channel along with a third option of Purpose Score based VizPlanet© Platform in synchronous mode i.e. real time synchronization of SKU’s & content - and so potentially replacing the newly constructed brick and mortar platforms


4. Brick and mortar platform with a purpose score enabled vanilla online channel along with a third option of Purpose Score based VizPlanet© Platform in synchronous mode i.e. real time synchronization of SKU’s & content with lot more value-add services like personalization and so eliminating the need for the new brick and mortar platforms, especially in the developing world


5. 100% “one-stop-shop” VizPlanet© Platform in synchronous real time mode eliminating all commercial real estate platforms(remediate the brick and mortar real estate for other services where virtual services are not possible to provide)

Having said that, by no means, we are suggesting that any of these options, will replace the current solution(s) in totality – rather, we suggest that these solution options, among many of the other experimentation solution options, has a great potential to compliment the current solution options. In other words, our solution is an experimentation option – with a potential to become the stepping stone, for the long ranging solution(s) within the 5-10 year purpose reform road map.

Conclusion
In closing, our hope is that sustainability experts, will pay a closer attention to our experimentation based solution options, given the fact, our VizPlanet© approach (including its ancillary platforms like VizMall©, VizTV©, VizDiner©, VizBev© etc), not necessarily, just solves those sustainability challenges, but also, it provides a better value (price) proposition for all parties, with an "almost similar look and feel type shopping/consumption experience" of their brick and mortar platform counterpart, thus motivating corporations and consumers to consume more and more purpose bundles, with an intention to increase their purpose scores -resulting in a win:win value proposition for all parties, in the long run!