Not only is strategy worthy of the name only when it is implemented in a company's operations, but a company's distinctive operational capabilities can themselves serve as the cornerstone of powerful new strategies. Operations can and should expand strategic options.
IMNN has its roots in the firm's contribution to the process revolution: our pioneering work in the 1990s on time-based competition.
In the 1999s, our focus turned to the dramatic impact that capabilities have on business models, especially the capability to share more or better informationin less time. This led to the concept of deconstruction offering ways for companies to deconstruct themselves, in a sense, and then reconstruct themselves in different forms, radically altering value chains in their industries and establishing new competitive advantages.
Since the advent of e-commerce, we have worked extensively to integrate connectivity into our clients' operations, again creating new strategic options. Clearly, the Internet allows companies to re-craft interactions with their customers, suppliers, employees and beyond. But recrafting certain interactions also may allow companies to transform relationships in ways that create structural, sustainable competitive advantage. Or, in other words, that create digital advantage.
Thus the scope of our work is broad. We focus not just on stimulating improvement or efficiency, but also on using operations to build competitive advantage, with the customer perspective as the driving force. Our approaches and tools address a broad variety of issues that lie at the intersection of operations and strategy, including:
