Tilt

11. Tilting Your Strategy and Organization

A downstream tilt leaves industries and the companies that play in them altered forever. As costs, value creation, and sources of competitive advantage tilt downstream, industry landscapes are overhauled: new forms of value are created, companies that seize new forms of advantage thrive, and those that don’t scurry for survival or lag. For firms, the tilt implies change on multiple fronts, notably, changes in strategy formulation, the way firms are organized, downstream functions such as marketing and sales, and competition in global marketplaces. The changes are deep, widespread, and, for businesses with large upstream investments and a commitment to managing for the upstream, often difficult.

For ...