“Never compete with someone who has nothing to lose.”
-Baltasar, Gracián
In Småland, Sweden, Bearing is a partner to the The Wood industry event 2013 (Träslaget 2013) and this year’s theme is Innovation. It is an annual national event and a meeting place for businesses, organizations and students within the wood industries. The purpose of the event is the exchange of knowledge, experience around the technologies, business networking, methods, and so on. The event will take place on May 30.
The Wood Industry event 2013 is organized by the Nässjö Academy, which runs post-secondary education for Applied Sciences. Wood is Sweden´s largest export industry in all categories. If you put a compass in Nässjö and draw a circle with a 15 mile radius, then 75% of the country’s carpentry business, the leading wood building manufacturers, the furniture industry as well as numerous sawmills are within that circle.
As a part of our collaboration, Jörgen Eriksson and Leyla Is gave a half-day lecture on 24 January to the students at Nässjö Academy;, with the aim of fostering an innovative mindset.
Approximately 200 students gathered to listen to "How to face hyper competition". Students at the Academy learned about the effects of globalisation and hyper competition and how they through innovation can find their sweet spot and differentiate in ways to make their business unique. The audience was very active with questions and there was an interesting dialogue and exchange of views.
The students were also told how to implement the Lean philosophy and its eighth waste, which is about unused human creativity. But also how you can optimize an activities process and create sustainable growth.
Innovation and Lean
Most companies’ face realities today which are characterised by hyper competition and rapid changes in all forms, from customer demands to technological solutions. Consequently, barriers to entry that were once considered permanent are long gone and have been replaced by barriers to entry and benefits that constantly mutate.
It is difficult for companies to set traditional long-term strategies and survive adhering to them. Rather, setting long term objectives based on the adage "What are we really good at and how can we use it?” have become more relevant.
This reality forces a need for constant incremental renewal and innovative enhancements, based on being innovation in all aspects of the business, not only in development of products and services that can be easily copied.
Value is created on the edge of your business
Creating value long term can no longer be dependent on product and service innovation and development. In a world of hyper competition new functions and features are easily and quickly copied by competitors.
In today’s reality of hyper completion, long term value is created on the edge of your business; involving differentiation and innovation in business model, operations, sales and marketing, as well as delivery and consumption. Many companies innovating in these dimensions have proven to gain more sustainable competitive advantages than companies that primarily innovate around products and services.
Operations are the business processes and organisation to produce goods and services. One increasingly popular way to innovate a business’ operations for efficient use of resources is to embrace Lean.
In Bearing, we have lean experts who helps to develop companies and organise competence networks around this very important methodology.