How to win against rip currents and Asian competitors? - Differentiate and specialise!

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 112

How do you escape a rip current at sea? Never swim straight back towards the beach and directly against the rip. Instead, swim sideways along the beach for 100 metres and then head towards land. Rip currents are narrow flows and should be avoided, not fought.

The same is true of global trends. If you are a western company or university, there is no point in fighting against the rise of Asian competitors. Instead, simply do things differently. If you have just fallen out of the Global Top 100 because five more Chinese entities have entered the ranking and displaced you, don't just fight back head on, on all fronts. Instead, decide in which direction you can differentiate and specialise, and focus on cornering the market in that particular field. It is unlikely that you will have to make a choice between more than two possible ways forward. 

Isn't this just like at a beach with a rip current: all you need to do is swim along the beach either to one side, or to the other.

Rip current diagram (Source: Wikipedia)

Rankings are a bamboo forest; Consulting is a vineyard

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 94

When you create a ranking for an industry, you are growing a bamboo forest: visible from afar but with shallow roots. Botanically the bamboo is a grass and its roots reach down only a metre under ground. Similarly, rankings do not change the ground underneath: they just increase the visibility of the status quo, like bamboos that create a leafy cover on top of a mountain slope.

On the other hand, when you offer a consultancy service to an industry, you are planting a vineyard, as vine roots reach up to 10 metres deep. What is key in consulting is that it produces recommendations for improvement - the essence of a long and structured process - just as the vines produce grapes based on the richness of the soil.

Bamboo (Source: Wikipedia)