Edge Strategy ─ A New Mindset for Profitable Growth

Stay focused. Stick to your knitting. Go with what works. In today’s volatile economic environment, filled with uncertainty and sudden change, the forces pushing us to keep focused on the core business become extremely powerful. And, of course, profiting from the core is crucial. But the danger is, over-focus on the core can blind companies to the substantial opportunities for growth that are often hidden in plain sight, at the edge of the core business.

Edge Strategy is uniquely positioned at the intersection of marketing and strategy, focusing on the myriad opportunities that areinternal to the business, and showing leaders how to recognize and then leverage these opportunities at the margins. Crucially, the customer’s experience of a company and its products is central to what makes the Edge Strategy work. Strategy experts Alan Lewis and Dan McKone have a sharp, practical way of characterizing and visualizing the different kinds of edges:
Product edge. Value that’s realized by gauging the customer’s value perimeter” specifically in relation to yourproductshighlighting bundling and unbundling opportunities.
Customer Journey edge. Here, you gauge the customer value perimeter in relation to the customer’s experience of your overall offering and brand, capturing value at different points in the journey.”
Enterprise edge. This edge creates value when assets, competencies, and capabilities developed for your offering can be used in a different context, for a different offering, or for a different set of customers.

With engaging examples from across many industries, Lewis and McKone coach readers on how to identify and assess each of the different edges and then provide concrete insights and advice on Edge Strategy and tactics in specific business contexts. The book concludes with a ten-step process to help executives and managers to find and leverage the edge opportunities in their own companies.

Edge Strategy is the concise, hands-on guide for growing your business by getting more yield from assets already in place, access already established, investments already made.

Alan Lewis is a Managing Director and Partner in L.E.K. Consulting’s Boston office. He has more than eleven years of experience working on a wide variety of projects, including corporate strategy development, new product development and commercialization, mergers and acquisitions support, program management, and organizational improvement. Prior to joining L.E.K.’s London office in 2003, Alan spent five years with chemicals multinationals Imperial Chemical Industries PLC and INEOS. Alan received a Bachelor of Engineering in chemical engineering from the University College Dublin. He is qualified as a professional engineer with the Institute of Chemical Engineers in the UK and holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge.

Dan McKone is a Managing Director and Partner at L.E.K. Consulting and a member of L.E.K.’s Global Leadership Team. He leads the firm’s service line initiatives in the area of Customer Impact (customer experience, loyalty, and profitability). Dan has spent much of the last decade working on the growth and optimization of consumer-facing businesses. He is a leader in L.E.K.’s retail practice and also heads the firm’s travel/hospitality efforts in the Americas. He has directed more than 250 projects, spanning performance improvement, strategic decision analysis, new concept development, channel strategy, pricing and positioning, organizational design, new business launches, and mergers and acquisitions. Dan comes from a finance background, and prior to L.E.K. he worked in Latin America for a large multinational corporation. Dan has an MBA in finance from the Wharton School. He also holds an AB, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College, with dual majors in economics and government.