ABSTRACT
As I sketch out the plan of this book, I am sitting on an aeroplane working on my iPad. Like most of us, I multitask, and there are four documents open on my device. The fi rst is a mind-mapping app that I use for planning any important piece of work. It is currently showing an incomplete plan for the book you are now reading. The second is an e-book I am re-reading: The Origin of Species , Charles Darwin’s most famous book, a work that changed the way scientists look at the natural world and, as I will discuss later in this chapter, the way that management scientists think about organisations and industries. The other open apps are a PowerPoint presentation and a Word document. The PowerPoint is a situation analysis, sent to me by a medium-sized pharmaceutical company, describing how changes in the healthcare funding system, regulatory system and technological environment are combining to make their existing business model obsolete. Their customers won’t pay for the drugs they can develop and, to develop the drugs their customers are willing to pay for is too costly and too risky for their shareholders’ appetites. Perplexed by what they see as irreconcilable demands of their customers and their owners, they have asked me to review their presentation and to advise them on how to respond to the situation. Their request is typical of the advisory work I do with many pharmaceutical and medical technology companies. The fi nal document open on my iPad is the Word document. It is a report I am about to send to a very large, powerful medical technology company who were faced with a similar situation to the pharmaceutical company. However, they thought about the problem sooner and have tried to adapt to the fundamental, inexorable changes in their market. Their attempts to change have failed, resulting in lots of costs and disruption but no new value for either their shareholders or their customers. Having asked me to assess why their change efforts are not producing the intended results, my report to them describes the deeply embedded behavioural factors that have emasculated their well-intentioned attempts at strategic transformation.
