Centre for Law Policy Innovation Initiative · Transcript · · Updated
Building a Business Strategy to Expand Across Borders – Transcript
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- Strategy is defined as a prescription outlining how a business will achieve long-term success by responding to challenges and opportunities to create, deliver, and capture value.
- Exporting is an entry into a new market where buyers change and the underlying problem the product solves may also be very different.
- A proper business strategy must answer eight questions covering intended buyers, the problem to be solved, commercial worth, friction, value proposition, critical success factors, competition, customer acquisition, and profit formula.
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and we learn what strategy is. One more person. As we wait for one more person. One more person to talk about their experience in building strategy for their business.
Um have you had any experience in building strategy for your business? Tell us about it. >> Hi, my name is Omar. >> You want to tell >> The experience was bad.
Also because there's a lot of planning that goes into it. So, for me, what that looks like is you envision on how do I want my product or service to go to the people, and then what are the steps that are going to get me there. For us, it was a lot of building onto the work that we had done, and then finding the relevant things that how do we solve the problems that people are facing, and then put that to paper to visualize it from the incoming backwards.
>> Well, at least you have some experience. Isn't it? Even a bad experience is better than anything. We are Oh, so I have to define that. I need a full screen.
We are ready. Um How come it's not moving? Yeah, it's moving now. Thank you.
All right. So, that's our topic, building a business strategy to expand across borders. That's what we are talking about um over the next 30 35 minutes. Okay?
All right, let's start passing ourselves. When it comes to strategy, what are you thinking about? What comes to mind? Now, we have a lot of prescription for how your business is going to achieve long-term success by responding to challenges and opportunities. Pretty much that's what I would define a strategy to be.
It's a prescription for that outlines how your business is going to achieve long-term success by responding to opportunities and challenges. That's how I would define a strategy.
All right. Are you I'm not able to forward. What has happened? Um, it's not forwarding.
I'm using this. Okay? Uh, I need to be able to use this. Um, did you move it? What happened? Okay, now it's working. All right.
So, let me do the projection myself, huh? Okay? So, um, whatever we talk about the strategy, um, whatever strategy it is, it must help your organization create deliver and capture value.
Whatever strategy you're talking about. So, we said it's a prescription basically for how you are going to achieve long-term success. And we are saying by responding, rather, by responding to opportunities and challenges. And we are saying whatever, um, you think a strategy is, um, >> [clears throat] >> you whatever it does for it must be help you
create, deliver, and uh and capture value. So, that's what we say about strategy. Thanks. You are sharing your pointer. No, it's because they are forwarding the I'm okay with this. It's working. It's just that they were tinkering with it.
Yes. You think that again. I think you have. Okay. Let me just Let me use this. What do you have?
Come on. Sorry about the technology. All right. Seems to be working. Okay. Let me continue from there. So, the thing about strategy, the keyword about strategy, um in the last two slides, number one is responding, and then number two is value.
So, when you're responding to challenges or opportunities, the intention is to create, to capture uh to create, to deliver, and capture value. So, whatever you're calling your strategy is a tool for creating value. So, you're responding to opportunities and challenges, and in the process of doing that, you are creating value.
Now, what do you think of that statement? The absence of strategy is the absence of what? A strategy. So, this is why as a business owner, you can't avoid being in the space of strategy. Why? Because you're always responding to opportunities and challenges. So, by default, you are a strategy practitioner. The only difference is whether you're doing it wrongly or rightly.
Yes. If you are a business owner, by default, you are a strategy practitioner, whether you have gone to school or not. And when I ask you, "Do you have a strategy?" and you tell me, "I don't have one." What you really just told me is that your strategy is not to have a Well, I hope that's good for you.
It's working for you. All right, let's move on. Now, let's talk about exporting cuz that's really helping you think broadly about your your export strategy, whether you're in goods or services. Now, first statement I need to make is exporting is not a capability upgrade. What is it then?
It's an entry into a new market. That's what you're doing. When you get into cross-border trade, you're not just you're not just upgrading your capabilities. It's entry into the new market. And two things are going to change at once, once you decide to export. Number one, of course, what you know, your buyers are going to change cuz they're across the across the border, they're in Europe, in the US, in Japan, wherever they are.
But now the other one that is usually ignored, when especially when you think about exporting, is number two. What I'm calling the job may change. What do I mean by that? I am saying people hire a product to solve a problem for them.
The same same way you hire employees, the same way they hire your products or services to solve a problem for them. Now, that problem um that is across the border may be very very different.
So, it's true you're solving a different buyer, but secondly, you may be solving a very different problem for the same buyer. Now, let me put it very plainly. Every business is built on assumptions.
Those assumptions had better be correct. Every single business is built on assumptions. And we are saying those assumptions had better be correct. When you are exporting, you have an assumption about the buyer, and you have an assumption about the underlying problem the client is trying to solve.
So, please, before you export, be clear who is your buyer. And then secondly, you need to be clear, are you solving the same same problem? For instance, you're exporting fish, you're exporting avocado. Maybe locally people use avocado for avocado oil.
But across the border, it's the one keep fresh. Same product, different problems. So, you need to be very very very clear. Let's move on. >> success and all that. And another issue we face is that because we don't have a single portal that can give you all the information you need for these
transactions. We know that every country has their regulations, every country has their their compliance, their standards regarding packaging, regarding labeling and all that. And so, if you don't know what pertains in a country, it's difficult to send products across the country. Sometimes you send it in your >> All right. So, allow me to move on. So, let's move to strategy now.
And we are saying a proper strategy, even an export strategy must be able to answer eight questions, and I'll take you through the those eight questions for the next 20 or so. Okay, a proper export strategy, or any strategy for that matter, must be able to answer eight questions.
Number one, let's go to number one very quickly. Who are your intended buyers? Now, whenever we pose this problem to our SMEs in Kenya, they say we are targeting everyone. To target everyone is to target nobody.
You need to be very, very clear about who you are targeting. So, who are your intended buyers? That's question number one. Who are your intended buyers? If you cannot identify them with in a crisp, very definite way, you'll have a bit of a problem.