Theory vs. practice. When it comes to business success, there’s a big difference.

According to the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy, for example, Cirque de Soleil created uncontested space in the market, making competition irrelevant. In reality though, Cirque de Soleil was started by a fire-breathing street performer and some mates who spent 4 years farting around with ideas in a Canadian village and did their first international show after 7 years of trial and error.

Similarly the boffins at Boston Consulting Group once wrote a paper for the British motorcycle industry explaining Honda’s success selling small bikes in the US. It was all down to experience curves, cost management, yadda yadda. In reality though, Honda tried selling big bikes but failed. Locals in LA noticed their employees riding Honda scooters and wanted to buy them, so they sold the small bikes instead.

Clever theories can be dangerous, seducing us into thinking that with the right data, the right analysis and the right plan, success is guaranteed. Unfortunately though, such deliberate approaches to strategy rarely work as planned because the world is too unpredictable. An emergent approach based on experimentation and learning tends to be more successful in practice.

#strategy

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