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Why Business Architect?
In today's complex
new economy
driven by knowledge and
systemic innovation,
business architects are in growing demand.
To build a winning
synergistically integrated
organization,
companies need
cross-functionally excellent people who can
tie several silos of business development expertise together, create
synergies,
and then
lead people who will put
their plans into action.
 6Ws of Corporate Growth
Business Architect Defined
Business architect is a person that
initiates new business ventures or leads
business innovation, designs a
winning
business model,
and builds a sustainable
balanced business
system
for a
lasting success.
Business architects can be found in a multitude
of business settings: corporate change leaders, initiators of
joint ventures, managers of
radical innovation projects,
in-company ventures,
spin-outs, or
new start-up ventures.
Although the settings in which business
architects act are different, they all design and run a new venture to
achieve its
sustainable growth.
Cross-Functional Excellence
If you build broad
cross-functional expertise, no idea will be wasted! Your
mind can accept only
those ideas that have a frame of reference with your existing knowledge. It
rejects everything else. If your knowledge is functionally focused, you'll
be open to new ideas related to your functional expertise only and will miss
all other learning and innovation opportunities. If you develop a broad
cross-functional expertise, no new idea will be wasted. It will immediately
connect with the existing knowledge and will inspire you, energize
you, and encourage your
entrepreneurial creativity.
The broader your net, the more fish you catch.
Balanced Organization:
5 Basic Elements
Leadership
(Fire):
More
9 Signs of a Losing Organization
Innovation-friendly Organization
Balance Your
Business System
The primary goal of any business is to increase stakeholder value. It is
achieved through a dynamic balancing of competing values.
Balanced Business System
In order for a
business to maximize economic value, it must balance
customer satisfaction and competitive market forces with internal cost
and
growth consideration...
More
The Tao of Business Success
The Tao of Business Success
helps you achieve much more with much less effort. It gives you advice that
imparts perspective and
balance.
It applies equally well to the managing of a large corporation or the
running of a small business...
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Sustainable Business Models
Sustainable business success is based not on
great ideas, guts, or instinct alone – but on your ability to create an
master your
business model.
In the
new era of unrelenting change and competition, your face a daunting
challenge: how to sustain the business model of your firm. "The fact is, no
matter how bulletproof your firm's current business model, it will be
challenged by
new business models."4
The new reality is that business models have shorter shelf life. You must
constantly attempt to discover new business models if you hope to survive
and
grow...
More
Selecting the Right Business Model for
Your Startup Venture
Venture Planning is
development of a means of comparing various business models, usually
through financial modeling to answer the following questions...
More
Building Your
Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Sustainable competitive advantage
is the prolonged benefit of implementing some unique value-creating strategy
based on unique combination of internal organizational
resources
and
capabilities
that cannot be replicated by competitors...
More
3 Strategies of Market Leaders
SWOT Analysis:
Questions To Answer
-
What is your strongest business asset?
-
What do you offer that makes you stand out from the rest?
-
Do you have any specific marketing expertise?...
More
Integrated Approach To the
Management Process
The integrated
business systems approach
to business development and the management process is what distinguishes
modern cross-functionally excellent business architects from functional
managers. As a business architect and an
extremely effective leader, you must have a broad view to be able to link
together –
synergistically!
– the key components of corporate success – from functional planning to
cross-functional cooperation, from
supply chain management to
customer value creation,
from the art of
continuous learning
to the practice of
effective
communication and
influencing people – and bundle them in an intellectual, innovative and
pragmatic package that can be used to achieve
sustainable competitive advantage
and business growth, both
top-line
and
bottom-line. To fulfil these responsibilities, a Business Architect
typically should have broad
cross-functional expertise.
Systems Thinking and Modern Management
The goal of
systems thinking is to
manage the rapidly growing complexity of the worlds of business and
technology.
The task of a business architect
and a
process manager is to create systems, within a sensibly structured
business, that
empowers
employees
and enables people to achieve higher productivity and greater
competitive advantage.
Systems thinking characterizes many of the world's leading executives. It is
a formal discipline of management science that deals with
the whole business system and
in terms of the interconnections and interactions of its parts.
"Many managers fail to see
the forest for the trees. This is not an either/or problem. The trick is to
see both the forest and the trees. Systems thinking is a methodology for
doing both simultaneously. It's more than a methodology, it's like learning
a new language and takes nearly as long as learning a foreign language to
achieve maturity."1
The Rise of the
IT Architect
IT architects are in growing demand. They
are
cross-functionally excellent people who can "tie several silos of
expertise together," relate to business problems as well as technology, and
then sell their ideas upward and downward in the corporate hierarchy.
"Enterprise architects aren't just technology experts; they are leaders with
broad IT knowledge, the savvy to apply it to business problems and the
communication skills
necessary to coordinate the people who will put their plans into action,"
says Bill Liguori, senior vice president and co-founder of the placement
firm Leadership Capital Group. 2...
More
Corporate Culture
In six words,
corporate culture is "How we do things
around here."
Corporate culture is the collective behavior of
people using common
Corporate vision, goals,
shared values,
beliefs,
habits, working language, systems, and symbols. It is interwoven with
processes, technologies, learning and significant events. In addition,
different individuals bring to the workplace their own uniqueness,
knowledge, and ethnic culture. So
corporate culture encompasses moral, social, and behavioral norms of your
organization based on the values, beliefs, attitudes, and priorities of its
members...
More
Building a Team Culture: 10 Action Areas
It is becoming increasingly important that
teams function productively
with a minimum of supervision.
Team culture ensures that individual members both demonstrate their best
talents and function
synergistically
as a unit to achieve common goals...
More
Kaizen Culture
Kaizen,
or continuous improvement, is an integral part of corporate culture. It
requires continuous both conscious and sub-conscious thinking about
improvements from everyone. Nurturing and effectively integrating Kaizen
into corporate culture is not easy. It requires a sustained effort. But,
as
Toyota
has demonstrated, it offers a more sustainable competitive advantage...
More
Leading
Systemic
Innovation
There are many parts of the whole field of
innovation: strategy innovation, new product development, creative
approaches to problem solving, idea management, suggestion systems, etc.
Though all of these components are important, in the new era of
systemic innovation,
you must design your firm's innovation process holistically.
Innovation is not divisible –
‘good in parts’ is no good at all. Innovation systems are only as strong as
their weakest links...
More
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