Strategy: Exploiting Constraints for Competitive Advantage
Strategy is everywhere, but a shared, meaningful language for it stays surprisingly elusive — we reach for words like moat, ecosystem, and synergy and find that having the vocabulary is a long way from speaking the language.
This session isn't about buzzwords.
It's about a single idea: strategy is the art of exploiting constraints. Every company competes inside limits set by its industry, its customers, and what its technology allows, and strong strategy works those limits deliberately — choosing tradeoffs on purpose to build advantage that's genuine and defensible.
Drawing on decades of research and consulting with some of the world's largest organizations, Raynor will cover the five concepts that make up a complete strategic picture — Industry, Position, Differentiation, Value, and Persistence — and show how the strongest performers consistently bet on better before cheaper.
Throughout, he'll show how these ideas are embodied by Canary Medical, the medical-device startup he co-founded, tracing its path from a drawing on a napkin to the cusp of success.
Whether you own a P&L, shape strategy for a business unit, or just want a sharper way to evaluate where advantage really comes from, you'll leave able to read any strategy with a strategist's eye.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN:
Why strategy is necessarily based around tradeoffs between cost and performance
Why the most successful strategies deliberately embrace and exploit constraints
How the nested and cascading concepts of industry, position, customer needs, differentiation and value chain collectively define an organization’s strategy
The power of strategic thinking, its limits, and what comes after strategy.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
The “strategy curious”: anyone who has ever been in a conversation about strategy and had a “Princess Bride” moment: does that word mean what that person thinks it means?
The “strategy furious”: anyone who believes that strategy is a rigorous discipline that can be highly effective when understood deeply, and so is open to new interpretations and insights derived from timeless, but not always widely recognized, truths.
SESSION AGENDA:
35 minute: Expert-led walkthrough
15 min - discussion/Q&A
**Be Sure to Check out Our Co-Sponsor PDMA DC Chapter's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9154579/
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Michael E. Raynor is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at Ivey Business School and a former Deloitte Managing Director whose work focuses on strategy, innovation, uncertainty, and decarbonization. He is the co-author of The Innovator’s Solution and author of The Strategy Paradox, The Innovator’s Manifesto, and The Three Rules, and has published in Harvard Business Review, Strategic Management Journal, and other academic and practitioner outlets.
SOCIALS
https://www.ivey.uwo.ca/faculty_research/directory/michael-raynor/
linkedin.com/in/michaeleraynor