Reframing Risk—and Opportunity
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Why GBN?
The GBN approach to risk doesn’t begin with mitigation strategies against a pre-existing body of known risks. Instead, we use scenario thinking to help companies re-perceive the ways in which critical uncertainties could combine to create very different futures in the marketplace and the world. By focusing first on what the future might look like, rather than jumping ahead to what your company ought to do, our approach helps you see patterns of risk and opportunity that are integrated from the outset and connected to patterns of variables in the world that you can track over time.
Case Study
Who: A biomedical company was ramping up again after a series of product quality problems and a major corporate reorganization. The company wanted to leapfrog from second place to lead a small number of competitors in the field. The company sought GBN’s assistance in anticipating and mitigating risks, and in uncovering new strategic opportunities.
Our Approach: Using our proprietary FastForward scenario methodology, GBN first helped the company interactively explore a broad set of potential risks and uncertainties arising from new biomedical technology, changing regulations, physician and patient preferences, emerging markets, competitor actions, and other factors. After surfacing and challenging deeply held assumptions about the ways some of these, and other, risks and uncertainties were most likely to play out, we co-created a deeper, richer set of scenarios about the client’s future marketplace and the implications for risk mitigation priorities and strategic opportunities.
The result: The company realized that the direct competitors they had been tracking for years could soon be dwarfed by new, larger competitors emerging at the intersection of biomedical devices and communications technologies. The company recognized that these new players could have enormous influence over federal regulation, consolidation in the marketplace, opportunities in developing markets, price points, brand recognition, and many other factors. Within the new landscape defined by the scenarios, it also became clear how the company’s direct competitors were positioning themselves. The scenarios exposed a number of risks that had been largely unanticipated by the company, but importantly, the scenarios also revealed several surprising strategic opportunities.
The scenarios created a shared framework that the company used to guide their conversations and decision-making about which strategic course they would pursue over the next several years. Monitor colleagues then performed intensive research and analysis on the risks and opportunities identified in the scenario process, and analyzed the market viability of the company’s top strategic options. Guided by a scenario-based approach to understanding risk, opportunity, and uncertainty, the company was able to break out of their internal focus (i.e., How do we avoid risks from our closest competitors?), and place their decision-making within a much broader context (i.e., How will we be positioned if our entire industry undergoes a radical transformation? Will the decisions that help us succeed in that case also help us grow if our industry remains largely the same?).
The GBN approach to risk doesn’t begin with mitigation strategies against a pre-existing body of known risks. Instead, we use scenario thinking to help companies re-perceive the ways in which critical uncertainties could combine to create very different futures in the marketplace and the world. By focusing first on what the future might look like, rather than jumping ahead to what your company ought to do, our approach helps you see patterns of risk and opportunity that are integrated from the outset and connected to patterns of variables in the world that you can track over time.
Case Study
Who: A biomedical company was ramping up again after a series of product quality problems and a major corporate reorganization. The company wanted to leapfrog from second place to lead a small number of competitors in the field. The company sought GBN’s assistance in anticipating and mitigating risks, and in uncovering new strategic opportunities.
Our Approach: Using our proprietary FastForward scenario methodology, GBN first helped the company interactively explore a broad set of potential risks and uncertainties arising from new biomedical technology, changing regulations, physician and patient preferences, emerging markets, competitor actions, and other factors. After surfacing and challenging deeply held assumptions about the ways some of these, and other, risks and uncertainties were most likely to play out, we co-created a deeper, richer set of scenarios about the client’s future marketplace and the implications for risk mitigation priorities and strategic opportunities.
The result: The company realized that the direct competitors they had been tracking for years could soon be dwarfed by new, larger competitors emerging at the intersection of biomedical devices and communications technologies. The company recognized that these new players could have enormous influence over federal regulation, consolidation in the marketplace, opportunities in developing markets, price points, brand recognition, and many other factors. Within the new landscape defined by the scenarios, it also became clear how the company’s direct competitors were positioning themselves. The scenarios exposed a number of risks that had been largely unanticipated by the company, but importantly, the scenarios also revealed several surprising strategic opportunities.
The scenarios created a shared framework that the company used to guide their conversations and decision-making about which strategic course they would pursue over the next several years. Monitor colleagues then performed intensive research and analysis on the risks and opportunities identified in the scenario process, and analyzed the market viability of the company’s top strategic options. Guided by a scenario-based approach to understanding risk, opportunity, and uncertainty, the company was able to break out of their internal focus (i.e., How do we avoid risks from our closest competitors?), and place their decision-making within a much broader context (i.e., How will we be positioned if our entire industry undergoes a radical transformation? Will the decisions that help us succeed in that case also help us grow if our industry remains largely the same?).
