Formulating and implementing strategy has been about taking the long view. But how can one plan for a future that cannot be accurately forecast? In this report, we provide a framework — Strategic Flexibility — that is designed to enable organizations to prepare for what they cannot predict. Drawing on years of research, we present here a financial services industry perspective on how best to cope with and ultimately exploit uncertainty for competitive advantage.The complexity of the financial services industry can overwhelm any strategist. Companies in the financial services industry (FSI) must cope with multiple dimensions of change involving regulation, technology, globalization, new competitors and business models, capital market pressures, and constantly changing customer demands. Worse, on all of these dimensions it is not merely their complexity that proves daunting, but the uncertainty surrounding them. How will regulatory policy change, and what will the implications of those changes be? What new technologies will emerge and how will they affect existing business models? How will the capital markets react to new strategic initiatives, and what will that reaction mean when it comes time to make the next acquisition? Moreover, the uncertainty itself concerns two issues: what will happen, and when it will happen. Existing tools for strategy formulation and implementation are of limited help because they are premised either on a relatively stable future or on the ability to make roughly accurate predictions of what the future will hold. For example, traditional industry analysis presupposes that the structure of an industry will remain stable long enough for meaningful action to be taken. However, when it can take only months for the industry to change significantly, pursuing a particular course of action – for example, an acquisition – that is geared to the needs of today’s industry structure seems foolhardy...... www.m448 中国最大的资料库下载