Failsafe Strategies: Profit and Grow from Risks That Others Avoid

Chapter 5. Lowering Capability Risks with Visible and Invisible Outputs^[1]

In Chapter 4, Designing Strategies with Low Capability Risks, you saw many examples of how reducing capability risk when investment in new capabilities is needed to modify part of or the entire value chain. These investments are likely to succeed if these capabilities are a critical component of your business model and enable you to reduce demand or competitive risks. To continuously sustain your competitive advantage, you have to keep track of which capabilities are critical and which are not (table stakes, as defined in the next section). In this chapter, you consider some techniques not only to identify the critical capabilities, but also how to make these capabilities ...