Don’t stick with an eroding core business.

Economic downturns are among the best times for deep strategic change.  It can be the best window for businesses to recalibrate core businesses to align with shifting consumer needs and cultural change. 

Manufacturers often stay focused on an eroding core business, as Polaroid did, for far too long.  The challenge and upside of a downturn, however, is the window it provides to identify what may be hidden:  unmet consumer needs, underexploited capabilities and intellectual property or undervalued business platforms. 

At Trend Influence, many of our clients start the relationship in discomfort...discomfort in the recognition that the core strategy cannot be sustained.  And, one of the more frequent pains is centered in staying focused for too long on a business platform or growth formula with declining relevance.  Instead of staying with the status quo, we frequently develop innovation strategies focused in redefinition.  And, during economic downturns, these redefinitions are most often grounded in aligning hidden assets with consumer needs.  The discipline required to take this journey is stimulating, exciting and often uncomfortable (we continually remind ourselves that change is hard).  Tapping customer insight, however, is far more cost-effective than relying on business acquisition to fuel new footholds.  From LG to Navistar...from Levi Strauss to Coca-Cola...we delight in defining growth platforms via reinvention of form, package or extension of product form. Often, through hard-work (and a bit of fun) we discover that success can be found in our clients own backyard.