Understanding the Complex Ecosystem in Market-Oriented Companies

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Understanding the relationships between elements in the ecosystem is difficult for market-oriented companies. It's not just about supply and demand, but connecting cells within the organization. Capabilities are embedded in the network, connecting different parts and markets. The four key capabilities are external sensing, customer anticipation, innovation, and agility.

What can we learn from fast-moving companies—like Amazon, Google, and Alibaba—about how to organize to promote strategic growth?

University of Michigan business professor Dave Ulrich went inside these companies to study how their internal structure keeps them nimble, innovative, and market-oriented.

“That mental model of what an organization is, it’s about power, it’s about control, it’s about clarifying decision rights,” he tells IdeaCast host Curt Nickisch. “I think that mental model of an organization as a control system has basically got to shift.”

In this episode, Ulrich outlines three key capabilities that these newer companies have developed: monitoring the marketplace, sharing that intelligence company-wide, and innovation.

Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, business management, market intelligence, Google, Alibaba, technology, uncertainty, flux, agile.

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