How do you protect your business strategy?
Learn from the community’s knowledge. Experts are adding insights into this AI-powered collaborative article, and you could too.
This is a new type of article that we started with the help of AI, and experts are taking it forward by sharing their thoughts directly into each section.
If you’d like to contribute, request an invite by liking or reacting to this article. Learn more
— The LinkedIn Team
Your business strategy is your roadmap to achieve your vision, mission, and goals. It defines how you create and deliver value to your customers, stakeholders, and society. But how do you protect your business strategy from being copied, disrupted, or undermined by competitors, regulators, or external forces? Here are some tips to help you safeguard your strategic advantage and alignment.
Understand your environment
The first step to protect your business strategy is to understand your external and internal environment. You need to conduct a thorough analysis of the opportunities and threats in your industry, market, and society, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of your organization, resources, and capabilities. You can use tools such as SWOT, PESTEL, Porter's Five Forces, and VRIO to help you with this process. By understanding your environment, you can identify the sources of your competitive advantage, the gaps and risks in your strategy, and the potential scenarios and responses you need to prepare for.
-
I prefer to understand the environment through "know the stakeholders" of the business. Put the list of institutions, agencies, govt departments, platforms, peoples, places, products, services, logistics, competition, employee, customers etc. This is a great tool to get insight into business environment. For the start-ups and even for the matured businesses having complete details of the stakeholders provide the essential touch points which are inherent and necessary for the business transactions.
4
-
I’m a big fan of building in public, and transparency, as “there are no new ideas under the sun” and being cryptic or reserved has cost many visionaries their shots at success, but it is important that you don’t get IP stolen by organizations with big budgets etc. so keeping certain “secret sauce” for the right ears only can be astute and storing it in the right environments is best practice. Some people prefer end-to-end encryption to ensure complete privacy.
2
Communicate your strategy clearly
The second step to protect your business strategy is to communicate it clearly and consistently to your employees, customers, partners, and investors. You need to articulate your vision, mission, values, goals, and action plans in a way that is easy to understand, remember, and align with. You can use tools such as the Balanced Scorecard, the Strategy Map, the OKR Framework, and the Storytelling Technique to help you with this process. By communicating your strategy clearly, you can build trust, engagement, and commitment among your stakeholders, as well as differentiate yourself from your competitors.
-
Communication, insight, transparency and alignment will always be the best ways to gain productive buy-in, especially for strategic go-forward initiatives that may have large implications.
6
-
Bringing a visionary entrepreneur mindset to a small business especially labour intensive ones does not give any guarantee to success. Bringing a clearly communicated vision to clear objectives and buy in from the business team is a huge multiplier of the chances of success. We don’t always get that right in a busy environment where day to day activities become disrupted.
1
Monitor your performance and feedback
The third step to protect your business strategy is to monitor your performance and feedback regularly and systematically. You need to measure and evaluate the results and outcomes of your strategic actions, as well as the satisfaction and loyalty of your customers and stakeholders. You can use tools such as the KPI Dashboard, the Customer Journey Map, the Net Promoter Score, and the Feedback Loop to help you with this process. By monitoring your performance and feedback, you can track your progress, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
-
Always be testing! This means recording, analyzing, making small controlled changes and optimizing for best outcomes. NPS and other outdated frameworks are being replaced by new web3 technologies - it’s best to be aware of current tools and lesser known advantages especially in these rapidly progressing times.
7
-
Keep on reminding everyone in the company about the strategy, at all levels. Implementations starts from the bottom. Get everyone’s feedback, this will enable you to understand if the message is clear to everyone. Have regular check points to monitor progress against goals, and be ready to adapt constantly the action plan.
4
Innovate and adapt continuously
The fourth step to protect your business strategy is to innovate and adapt continuously to the changing needs and expectations of your customers, stakeholders, and society. You need to foster a culture of innovation and learning in your organization, where you encourage creativity, experimentation, and collaboration. You can use tools such as the Design Thinking, the Lean Startup, the Agile Methodology, and the Growth Hacking to help you with this process. By innovating and adapting continuously, you can create and deliver value that is relevant, unique, and sustainable.
-
The best ways to create a defensible strategy in the long term is to develop a moat, something that differentiates you in your industry as compared to your peers. In some industries, it is product selection e.g., Netflix and Amazon are leaders in the quality (former) and quantity (latter) of their portfolio of offering. In others, it is the user experience e.g., in music streaming, almost every platform has the same collection, but Spotify differentiates itself above others by providing incredible user experience. Identify the moat which will set you above others in the mind of the consumer. Everything else will be replicated by competitors sooner or later.
5
-
Keeping a pipeline is essential but requires a control on proportional NPD buried costs and human resource usage! We sometimes can risk tying up staff resources in projects that can’t mature to commerciality due to poor market research and loose opportunities on other forms of innovation diversity of form or alternative markets for products within key productive sales lines.
Protect your intellectual property
The fifth step to protect your business strategy is to protect your intellectual property (IP) from being stolen, infringed, or misused by others. You need to identify and register your IP assets, such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and know-how. You can use tools such as the IP Audit, the IP Strategy, the IP Portfolio Management, and the IP Enforcement to help you with this process. By protecting your IP, you can secure your legal rights, prevent imitation, and enhance your reputation.
-
Protecting your IP could be challenging. Some businesses do not even issue an IP to their innovation to keep the recipe secret. Some others prefer to issue an IP, so that they are protected against fakes, cheats and inferiors by making their recipe public. Always keep an eye on predicates and replacements. What value do they embark on and how do they do it? Recruit some IP agencies or full time detectives who protect your USPs.
(edited)4
-
A huge issue for sme’s and startups but critical in terms of scaling into export or home markets. Protecting our business model and know how is often difficult and undervalued more than IP protecting our products through patents.
3
Collaborate and cooperate strategically
The sixth step to protect your business strategy is to collaborate and cooperate strategically with other organizations that share your vision, mission, and values. You need to identify and select the right partners, alliances, and networks that can complement your strengths, compensate your weaknesses, and create synergies. You can use tools such as the Partnering Strategy, the Alliance Management, the Network Analysis, and the Coopetition to help you with this process. By collaborating and cooperating strategically, you can leverage your resources, expand your reach, and increase your impact.
-
Those who share your vision can end up eating your lunch, so be careful to always have a clear view of what makes you stand out from the herd. Synergies are fine but can lead to mergers if your values become too similar.
3
-
In the present day scenario of super competitive businesses, three steps are must according to me: 1. Create an ecosystem of like minded partners who you are working with in the background or in the markets. 2. The alliances and partnerships should be in strict adherence of "What business are we and they into?" If we are sure of synergy in collective short/medium term goals then only forging partnerships withstand as your partners are privy to some of the edges and USPs. 3. The joint roadmap needs to be walked jointly riding o each other's strength.
2
Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?
-
In my experience a company should always prepare 2 business scenarios - BEST case and BASE case. The reality will be somewhere in between but this approach is helpful in making intelligent provision (s). Obviously a thorough understanding of the internal and external business environment is needed to prepare the above scenarios. Finally a close monitoring of the actual business performance helps in making relevant tweaks to the above mentioned plans.
4
-
From my experience would add two things. First, it’s a teams effort so to protect the strategy team needs to craft it together and execute together. Having the right team is more important then “the right” strategy, as the right team will see and adapt the strategy as the circumstances change. Second, it needs to start with the vision so that people can understand initial “why” around the strategy. This also needs to be communicated clearly.
2