Luck is when preparation meets…

Going back to last year, 2012, when the Olympics were on in London, I had a stroke of luck. A blog I had written (The Missing Link to a Sustainable Future) was published by the Climate Spectator. This wasn’t the lucky part though. As I sat on the beanbag in front of the television at 5am in the morning I saw that Harvard’s Michael Porter* had picked it up and tweeted to his 40,000 plus followers.

Later that day, I told several colleagues about it and I described it to them as ‘lucky’. Michael Neaylon, one of my colleagues at the meet replied: it’s not luck, it’s when preparation meets opportunity.

I thought that this was a very profound quote and, for the record, he told me it came from someone else. It’s nice way of thinking though. In Australia, we often recount the victory of Stephen Bradbury, our winter Olympics speed-skating gold medalist in 2002, who only just scraped into the final. In the final itself, he was well behind in fifth and last place until, on the final lap, all four competitors crashed out leaving him to saunter across the line first.

Is this all luck? Partly yes, but let’s not overlook the preparation that got him there, the talent that saw him into the final. When his opportunity came, he took it. Sometimes we lament missing out due to bad luck; and others times we believe we achieved because of it. Maybe it really just reflects the dynamic between preparation and opportunity.

My challenge for you is to question whether you are prepared for the opportunities you seek? Preparation may be one of your untapped assets!

* Global competitive strategy expert and co-creator of the term “shared value”, when business engages with community interests to co-produce economic and societal returns. See the Climate Spectator article link above for more explanation.

Why cluster development is good for business

If we look at the wine industry in Australia or the IT sector in Silicon Valley, California, we see how the development of clusters can improve the prospects of a region or industry, driving productivity, innovation and competitiveness.

What role do social factors play in this process?

Michael Porter has been advocating the power of clusters for many years^[1]. Along with Mark Kramer, he has explored the social dimensions of cluster development.

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Deconstructing Porter & Kramer’s key sources of competitive advantage – Part 1

In 2011, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer published a paper in the Harvard Business Review that spelt out the concept of creating shared value, adding a deeper social context to Porter’s extensive works on competitive strategy.

Whilst this concept has been getting more airtime lately, the words shared value run the risk of (incorrectly) being interpreted as a voluntary activity for business, rather than a staple ingredient for success. As I argued in my recent piece published by the Centre for Social Impact and Business Spectator, shared value is just another name for ‘good business’.

Porter and Kramer identify three main activities that are sources of competitive advantage – and in this and the following two weeks I plan to look at each one in turn.

The first one is re-conceiving products and markets.

Essentially, it is about creating new product or market opportunities by addressing society’s greatest needs. In the past, too many businesses have been content to try and create ‘demand’ for goods and services that they produce, rather than focus on the unmet needs of society, such as improved health and nutrition.

For example, Nestle, as a global commodity food player, has chosen improvements in nutrition, water and rural development as its main areas of strategic focus, and is one of a handful of leading companies that explicitly refer to shared value in their corporate mantra.

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Societal purpose: the ultimate corporate weapon

Does a company need to sacrifice financial performance if it chooses to align itself with a societal purpose? Not at all. In fact, I contend that a societal purpose is a pre-requisite for producing strong financial returns. A handful of companies have already discovered this is the ultimate corporate ‘weapon’, and the trend is set to continue in coming years.
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