The Abridged

PROFIT PATTERNS
Workbook

The Abridged Profit Patterns Workbook is designed to equip you with the tools you need to

anticipate and exploit the profit patterns that are shaping your business.

The workbook is organized into five sections:

1 Learning Patterns - An introductory section designed to help you commit the thirty patterns to

memory.

2 Understanding the Full Strategic Landscape - Do you understand the full range of players in

your competitive space?

3 Strategic Pattern Detection—Finding Leading Indicators - An essential guide to helping you

anticipate the patterns in your industry before your competitors do.

4 Multiplying Strategic Options - Creating a choice spectrum that enables you to exploit the

emerging patterns in your industry.

5 Profiting from Patterns: “What’s My Best Move?” - Evaluating your moves and determining

the activities to get there.

Working through this sequence will help you to develop and use this thinking process for your
own company and industry.

One final note: This workbook is titled “The Abridged Patterns Workbook”. A version that goes

into further detail will be added to the web site at a later date .

XIV - 1
1 Learn the patterns covered on the webs ite
and others your team already knows .

2 S tudy the entire s trategic lands cape

(“Do I s ee the whole ches s board?”).

3 Be s ens itive to changing conditions and triggers .

T une your bus ines s antenna to pick up:
•Dys functionality
•Variation
•R ate of change
As k yours elf: “What’s wrong with this picture
from the cus tomers ’ view and from the inves tors ’
view?”

4 Create the full range of the relevant options .

5 “What’s my bes t move?”

•What new bus ines s des ign(s )?
•What new profit model(s )?
•What new s trategic control point(s )?

XIV - 2
1. Learning Patterns

Having a great patterns vocabulary makes a difference. Revisit the patterns web site as often

as you need to. Add your own examples to each of the patterns; make a patterns notebook and write your new

patterns and examples in it. Think about why the patterns happen, and what the early signals are.

Think also about the variants: Why are they important? Which ones might be most valuable

to you?

Focus on the rewards of early detection, and the opportunity cost of missing it. As you re-

read the patterns on the web site, think hard about the companies that didn’t “get it.” Why did they miss it?

What was it about their thought processes, or how they were organized, that caused them to miss the wave

and not recognize the next major profit opportunity? What would you have done differently? Why?

Debate these examples with your colleagues. Even better, debate them with your most

profitable customers and your most longstanding investors. It’s the best preparation for deciphering your own

strategic landscape and the opportunities hidden within it.

XIV - 3
2. Unders tanding the F ull S trategic L ands cape

Moving Beyond the Competitor Radar Screen to the Strategic Landscape

Value Migration challenges you to think creatively and differently about who your real

competitors are. It uses the concept of the “radar screen” to push your thinking beyond the normal scope of:

“My competitors are those companies that do what my company does.” The radar screen forces a broader

thinking about who your competitors are. It combines traditional, customer, and future perspectives regarding

potential threats. (See Value Migration, Chapter 2)

This workbook asks you to apply that rigorous thinking to the multiple groups that impact

your business; to move beyond the competitor radar screen to the strategic landscape. The challenge is to lay

out your company and all the other players (customers, channels, media, talent, suppliers, third parties) in a

way that allows you to step back and understand the relationships, points of control, and emerging profit

zones.

Competitor R adar S creen S trategic Lands cape

XIV - 4
Mapping Your Strategic Landscape

The exercise below is designed to help you systematically create a representation of your entire

relevant landscape.

But first, an example.

The insights gained from a sketch of the strategic landscape are critical to explaining the

company’s success. Here is an example of Schwab’s strategic landscape in 1991:

S chwab’s S trategic L ands cape, 1991

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XIV - 5
 What can you learn from observing Schwab’s strategic landscape? A rendering of this strategic

landscape may have led to several profit-impacting observations confronting Schwab in 1991:
• Most customers are poorly served
• Financial planners are a key channel to customers, but are a neglected group
• The incredible inefficiency of multiple mutual funds communicating to millions of
prospects
• Channeling mutual funds through one point would be an improvement for both customers
and funds
• Major banks and brokers are not the same as regional banks and brokers and should be
addressed differently

Now, Your Turn

Think about your own strategic landscape in its broadest sense. How many different customer

types are there? An example to spark your thinking may be Coke’s potential customer set, which

included bottlers, grocers, fountains, vendors, consumers, investors, and the media. Don’t forget to add

in potential customers—those who are not served now but could be in the future.

Identify the different customer types for your business. Then think about what makes each

customer type different, and jot down a one-liner that captures that difference. Focus especially on the

differences in what’s most important to each customer type.

Cus tomer T ype What’s mos t important to them?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

XIV - 6
 Now rearrange the order of the customer types you have listed. Array your customers from most

important or most valuable (line 1), down to least important or least valuable. A customer may not be the

most profitable, but can still be quite valuable. Are there such strategic customers for your business?

R ank Order of Cus tomer T ype by Value

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

You’ve just built one dimension of your own strategic landscape, your own business chess board.















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XIV - 7
 Next, fill in another dimension of the landscape. In the spaces below, name the various channels

through which customers in your industry buy. Go beyond the conventional channels to list all of the

ways customers can access the offerings that you and your relevant competitors make available.

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2.

3.

4.

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Given this information, write down each different type of business design/value chain that seeks

to serve these customers and channels (for example, financial services may have a banking value chain,

a mutual fund value chain, a brokerage value chain, a software value chain, an insurance value chain

and so on). Sketch out the value chains. Draw them unconventionally, beginning with the interface to

distribution (closest to the customer) on the left, and adding product, component, and asset as you move

toward the right.

1.

2.

3.

4.
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XIV - 8
 Is it important to fill in each step in the value chains? It depends. Is your intent to simply get a bird’s-

eye view of your industry? To understand how all the major parts interact? Then the details of each step are not as

important. But, when you begin to look at where the opportunity spaces and profit zones are located, knowing the details

of each value chain will become significantly more important.

The last step is to fill in the rest of the picture by adding suppliers, sources of innovation, talent, media,

investors, and so on. The result might look like this:

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It might seem easy to assume that these last players are unimportant and leave them out of the sketch.

Such a decision is dangerously wrong. Often, adding those players onto the landscape will provide important insights into

the most profitable strategic moves your company might be able to make, and some of the most important questions you

may want to address, such as:

• Who has a lock on the sources of talent?

• Who is the focus of the media and investors?

• Who has targeted the influencers?

XIV - 9
 The final, most important task is to identify your profit-impacting observations. Answering some of

the following questions might help:

• Are any customer sets underserved in the current landscape?

• Are any channels, value chains, suppliers, or other players currently being ignored?

• Are there dysfunctionalities in the flow of goods, services, and information among all players?

• Who now occupies the strategic position(s) on the landscape?

• Where are the areas of high profit in the landscape?

XIV - 10
3. S trategic Anticipation: F inding Leading Indicators

After you have drawn the strategic landscape, you will need to understand the

patterns that are altering its topography. Recognizing the patterns reshaping your industry will place

you in a position to “get it” early and take the lead, or to react earlier and shorten the lag behind your

competitors. There are three key components to this process:

• Recognizing the magnitude of value at stake

• Knowing your industry’s past patterns

• Identifying the conditions and triggers that lead to new patterns

XIV - 11
 Recognizing the Magnitude of Value at Stake

The stakes for winning and losing have increased dramatically. What is the magnitude of the

value, and profit, at stake in your industry?

The table below provides a few examples from other industries. Think for a moment about the

value differential between the gold medallist and the silver medallist in each industry. This is the benefit of

“getting it” early—or, conversely, the cost of “getting it” too late or not at all. Fill in your own industry at the

bottom. Remember to think broadly about whom you define as your competitor.

Gold S ilver
Medallis t Medallis t
Indus try - 1998
• Intel - $180 BB • AMD - $4 BB
S emiconductors

• GE - $300 BB • Wes tinghous e/CBS - $20 BB

Manufacturing

R etail • Home Depot - $70 BB • Loew’s - $14 BB

____________ • ___________ - $___ • ___________ - $___

What is the amount of value at stake in your industry? Take another look at your strategic

landscape. Who is competing for this value in your industry?

Are you the gold medallist in your industry? Do you understand why you are or aren’t? Do you

know the patterns that have reshaped your industry in the past?

XIV - 12
Knowing Your Industry’s Story

• What previous patterns have occurred in your industry?

_________________________
_________________________
_________________________
• What patterns did the gold medallist in your industry exploit?

_________________________
_________________________
_________________________

It is often said that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Today, such a repetition has

become very expensive. What lessons can you learn from other industries that will help you in your strategic

decisions? What predictions can you make about what is likely to happen in your industry?

Gold
Patterns at Work
Medallis t

• Micros oft • Deintegration, de facto standard, corners toning

• Coke • Cus tomer redefinition, reintegration

• Cisco • De facto standard, digital bus ines s des ign, s olutions

• GE • S olutions , product to knowledge

• Nike • Outsourcing, brand

• Yahoo • Brand, s witchboard, corners toning

• Mattel • Brand, profit multiplier

• T he Gap • Brand, reintegration

XIV - 13
 The gold medallists across numerous industries were among the first in their industry to “get”

and exploit the emerging patterns, and created tremendous value in the process.

What can you learn from how the patterns you listed in the previous table reshaped your

industry? Answering the following questions will guide you through your response:

• When did you first suspect the pattern? • ___________________

• When did you “get it”? • ___________________

• What did you do? • ___________________

• What could you have done? • ___________________

What enabled you to first suspect that a pattern was occurring?

Think for a moment about the lag time between first suspecting it, “getting it,” and then “acting

on it.” Was the lag time too long? Companies for whom that lag is extremely short will capture the most value in

their industry. Time means value!

Being attuned to the conditions and triggers that are forming in your strategic landscape is a

critical means of reducing the lag between suspicion and action. What conditions and triggers do you suspect are

in motion in your industry today?

XIV - 14
 Identifying the Conditions and Triggers That Lead to New Patterns

On the web site, you have learned about companies that have successfully anticipated and exploited

patterns in multiple industries. Many of these companies continue to be keenly attuned to the leading

indicators that cause new patterns to occur. Study these leading indicators on the web site before analyzing

your strategic landscape in this section.

In the space provided here, quickly sketch the strategic landscape you drew earlier.

Examine the activity in your strategic

landscape from multiple perspectives, using the

following sequence:

1. Your customers (traditional).

2. Your customers (broad definition).

3. Your competitors (traditional).

4. Your competitors (multiple perspectives).

5. Do the same for your complementor/supplier/

alliance partner set.

Recall the leading indicators described in the web site. Are any of these leading indicators manifesting

themselves in your strategic landscape?

_________________________
_________________________
_________________________
_________________________
The leading indicators described fall into three categories. The three charts that follow expand on those

ideas. The intent is to determine the nature of the leading indicators that are at work in your own strategic

landscape.

XIV - 15
Variability
Example: Profitability Across Value Chain

Profitability

20%

1%
Cus tomer

What does a current s naps hot of my economic neighborhood reveal?

• What variability exis ts in my • What variability in • What variability exis ts among

customer bas e in terms of: economics exis ts, e.g., my competitor/complementor/
- S ophis tication profitability, cost pos ition, s upplier/alliance partner s et?
- Power as set intens ity, s hareholder - L evels of operating
- S ystems economics value creation: performance (e.g.,
- Preferences (brands , - Along the value chain customer satis faction,
products , or s ervices ) - Among customer types customer boredom, cycle
- L evels/dis tribution of - Acros s geographies time, res pons e time,
wealth quality)
- Media us age - L evels of bus ines s des ign
- S atisfaction innovation (lethargy)
- L evels of financial
performance

What new ways of doing bus ines s could take advantage of this variability?

XIV - 16
 R ate/Direction of Change
Example: Internet Bandwidth

MM
S peed
Households
(KB PS )

60 5000
Me d i um/ Hi gh 53.3

Ba n dwi d t h 4000
50 Low Ba n dwi d t h 44.3
3000
40
34.8

30
300
22.9
20 200

12.2 100
10

0
1996 1 99 8E 200 0E 200 2E 200 4E
Analog Modem IS DN Cable
Source: Cowles/Simba Information; Cox Communictions Modem

What changes have we s een over the pas t three years ? Will thes e movements
continue/accelerate?

• How are customers • How are the economics of • How quickly are competitors
changing? my bus ines s changing? changing?
- Key priorities - Along the value chain - B us iness des ign
- Our relative ratings vs . - Among customer types innovation
competitors on mos t - Acros s geographies - New
important priorities investments / s kill
- R is ing expectations / • Is a new infras tructure s ets
s ophistication expected in the - Adjacent
- L evel/dis tribution of marketplace? economic
wealth neighborhood
• How quickly and in what - New actors or
direction is technology or redis tribution of
regulation changing? power/s tatus
- Competitors ;
customers /
channels ;
investors /
analysts

What new ways of doing bus ines s could take advantage

of thes e changes ?

XIV - 17
Dys functionality
Example: Home Project Supplies

Paint Plumbing
Store Supplies

Floor Lumber Heating

Coverings Yard Supplies

Hardware Lighting
Store Lamps

Where are the points of friction, inefficiency,

or mis match in my economic neighborhood?

• Are there mis matches • Are the economics of this • Are major organizational
between the cus tomers ’ marketplace dys functionalities at
current option(s ) and the fundamentally work?
required functionality? unattractive? Are they - Lack of leaders hip
- F eatures , s kills , deteriorating? - Ins titutional memory
inefficiency, s low - Commoditization - Wrong
res ponse times , etc. - Irrational competition capabilities /skill s ets
- Ass et intens ity - Atheros cleros is in
• Are there inefficiencies - R egulation/other information flow
along the value chain externalities
(which the cus tomer may
recognize)?
- Overs upply
- Bottlenecks
- Channel
fragmentation

What new ways of doing bus ines s could addres s /repair thes e
dys functionalities ?

XIV - 18
 What are the dysfunctionalities, sources of variability, and change vectors (rate and direction) in

your strategic landscape? Ask yourself that question for each of the groups listed below. For example: What

are the dysfunctionalities in my value chain?

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Dys functionality
• Inefficiency
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• Moving bottlenecks
• Other
Variability
• In profit along value chain or
cus tomer types
• In preferences
• In dis tribution of wealth
• Other

R ate/Direction of Change

• Of technology
• Of bus ines s des ign
innovation
• Cus tomer sophistication
• Other

In your s trategic lands cape, what are the three mos t important:
Dys functionalities S ources of Variability Change Vectors

1. 1. 1.
2. 2. 2.
3. 3. 3.

What patterns are they likely to trigger?

XIV - 19
4. Multiplying S trategic Options

As you begin to anticipate the next patterns in your industry, what actions will you take?

Before making your move, increasing your choice spectrum will dramatically expand the

value that can be created, and will compress the time frame required. Financial options are used to reduce

risk. They have value. Why shouldn’t strategic options do the same?

How can you create an expanded portfolio of options? Begin by examining companies that

have themselves aggressively pursued a greater choice set.

For each company, it is important to understand:

• When were the critical strategic junctures in its value growth history?

• What options were available? Considered?

• What choices were made?

In 1987, Microsoft may have regarded Windows and OS/2 as its entire options set. But it

could also have chosen amongst DOS applications, additional Macintosh applications, database software, etc.

It considered an extremely broad spectrum of moves, and chose several of the most valuable ones. Today,

Microsoft’s choice spectrum is significantly broader. Choosing among applications, operating systems, the

Internet, financial services, electronic appliances, and other strategic options allows Microsoft to improve its

odds of success dramatically.

XIV - 20
 Turn to the experience of your company. What is your historic value growth curve? Take the time to

identify the critical junctures, the options considered, and key moves actually made that have determined

the shape of the historic value growth curve. What were the critical decision junctures along the way?

What options were considered? How broad was the set of options available? What choices were made?

Why were they made?

Now begin to look forward. What patterns are relevant to your strategic landscape today? What did

the winners do? How fast were they to respond? What else could they have done?

Use this thinking to expand your own choice set. If you need ideas, examine the profit models

discussed in The Profit Zone. The profit models are shorthand versions of business design options for your

company. Find which ones are most appropriate and add them to your list.

Creativity is often a team sport. Get together a team of your strongest thinkers. Familiarize them

with your company’s strategic landscape. Then challenge them to design three new businesses that could

take your most profitable customers away. Take their ideas seriously, many successful upstarts were

founded by managers who once worked for incumbents. Are some of these options available to you?

XIV - 21
 List your options in the manner shown below. Begin with conventional options, then add the options

that would be aggressive for your company. Complete the set with those that might be the most innovative

or creative combinations of other options. What risks and advantage are associated with each set of

options?

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When you have compiled your list of options, array your full set of choices, from conservative on

the bottom to revolutionary at the top. How sparse is the top of the page? Do you need to challenge

yourself further?

What is the best move? Does the answer change depending on whether you think two moves out

rather than one? Three moves out rather than two?

XIV - 22
5. Profiting from Patterns : “What’s My Best Move?”

When you have an option set, you need to decide what will be your best move. Traditional thinking

may look only at your next move. But, as in game theory and chess, the true value comes from looking two

or three moves into the future.

Narrow choices, or thinking that is only one move out, delivers low or no value growth. With

broader choices and thinking that is two moves out, greater value growth can be achieved. The broadest

choice set, thinking that is 3 moves out, builds a foundation for creating the most powerful value growth

in your industry.

Using the options set you compiled in the previous section, assess each option one, two, and three

moves out. Some options may not take you three moves out; some may take you further. Which option

offers the greatest realizable value? One move out? Two moves out? Three moves out?

Which option creates the greatest strategic control? The greatest risk?

XIV - 23
 Now that you have chosen your move, how do you get there?

Activities R equired to Implement Bes t Option

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Some final questions to keep in mind:

• How much bandwidth do you need to make this change happen? How much bandwidth do you have
available?

• Is there a strategic shortcut that you can use to beat the time needed to implement?

• How prepared is your organization to take on this change?

– Does it have the necessary talent?

– Does it have the the right structure?

– Does it have the right culture?

• What can be done to best prepare it?

• How long will the pattern last? Will you be able to recognize when the next pattern comes along? What
are the questions that you need to keep in mind to do so?

XIV - 24
 “Money Makers ”: Questions To Translate Patterns to Profits

A different way to use patterns is to test your own situation against the stories described on the web

site. Are untapped profit opportunities for your organization suggested by the patterns that have played out

in other industries? Here are two examples of “profit challenge” questions drawn from two categories of

patterns: product and organizational.

P roduct P atterns
• Do I have a brand?
Product to Brand
• What does my brand mean?
• What does it stand for?
• What price premium does it command?
• What’s the most efficient path for building the brand I
need?

• Has profit gone from portfolio to blockbuster?

Product to Portfolio to B lockbus ter
• How do I create a system for producing blockbusters
consistently?

Product to Profit Multiplier S ys tem • How many times do I reuse my product or assets?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

• What system would enable me to do so?

Product to Pyramid • How many levels/ price points does my product have?
• How many could there be?

• Do I know my customers’ system economics?

Production to S olution
• How can I improve those economics—a lot?
• Which customers will pay me for doing so?

XIV - 25
Organizational P atterns

• What skill mix do I have? (A)

S kill S hift
• What skill mix do I need? (B)
• How do I get from A to B?
• How fast can I get from A to B?

• On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 is high), how much exposure do

Network
my people have to
– customers?
– profit accountability?
– investors?
• How do I
– maximize that exposure?
– in the shortest possible time?

• Where am I A+?
Corners tone
• What’s the single best next space for my organization
to pursue?

• What are my company’s most important business issues?

Digital Bus ines s Des ign
• How much of my business activity related to those issues is
bits rather than atoms?
• What percentage of those bits do I manage electronically?
• Where will the transition to managing bits electronically
have the most positive impact on my most important
business issues?

XIV - 26