Business Environments

A business process is the way value is provided to the customer. Customers begin as explorers or adventurers in a new market. The uniqueness (offering a competitive advantage) or the novelty of being first allows the market to dictate a higher price with moderate expectations on the part of the customer. However, as the customers mature in the market, the expectations go up and with increasing competition, the price goes down. This places a different environment on all process contributors.

There are three distinct business environments that will be discussed here. The first is the entrepreneur environment. The second will be the mature environment. The last is the compliance environment. Depending on the product or services, markets may experience one, two, or all three of these environment with some degree of overlap.

Key Benefits

Culture is tuned to support economic conditions.

Metrics and rewards are applied to obtained desired results.

Career opportunities are identified to manage resources.

Capabilities

The capabilities needed for achieving these benefits are:

Personal Self-Assessment and Technical Planning Development: The individual contributor needs to have the ability to gain immediate feedback concerning current and future skills. The Business Environment will indicate whether the expertise is need in depth or in breadth. An entrepreneur environment may be best serviced by growing the breadth of evolving technologies. The mature environment may be needing a more concentration in stabilizing and enhancing a technology field.
Alignment of Rewards and Activities with Business Values: Alignment of rewards and business value is sometime difficult to achieve. It is the answer to the question, "How does my contribution add to the companies bottom line?"
Assessment of Duration or the Rate of Change of the Culture: It is critical to understand the duration and contribution level of current influence factors in the current value web or chain. This will change with time, economic conditions, technology life cycle, or skill availability.