ABSTRACT
Figure 27-2 provides a way to look at things (using the vocabulary developed in this book) from the point of view of a particular company in an existing business. The company controls its processes (box A in the figure) and tries to improve business performance either by incremental improvement of processes (box B) or breakthrough improvement (box C) using methods such as steps iv and v in Figure 27-1.1
tDCA
~DCA Figure 27-2. Improvement Cycles versus Stage of Business
However, sometimes a company cannot improve enough (either with incremental or breakthrough improvement) in its existing business to stay ahead of competition or is unable to deal with novel forms of competition. In this case, a company finds it necessary to jump to box D (Figure 27-2) to determine what the new paradigm will be (the SCMT breakthrough cycle is explained on pages 615 and 617). If the company cannot figure out a new paradigm, it is forced to go back to box A and possibly go out of business. lf the company can figure out a new paradigm for the business, then it probably should go to box E to refine the new paradigm so it works in practice (what Geoffrey Moore is talking about when he describes crossing the chasm [211]), and then this becomes the standard (box F) for the new business. At this point, the cycle proceeds from box A with the new business becoming the existing business.
