ABOUT US
Harbor has over thirty-five years of experience working with clients on growth strategy and new business creation. At the core of our experience is a deep understanding of the technologies, markets and business characteristics—as well as the management and organizational challenges—that companies face when adopting and developing digital and Smart Systems. We strive to generate deep insight into how emergent technologies and new business models drive value creation and competitive advantage in our clients’ businesses.
SMART SYSTEMS DESIGN CORE PRINCIPLES
Catalytic combinations of technologies drive value
Core technologies are reinforcing and accelerating one another multiplying their impact. Organizations can deliberately organize creative combinations of innovation to drive new value.
Think about opportunities as systems, not products
Innovators like Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs understood product innovation as well as also the business systems that created entire industries. Organizations need to look beyond their products and imagine entirely new experiences and marketplaces.
Strange bedfellows enable creativity and innovation
Organizations need to reach beyond their comfort zone to include diverse new viewpoints – what we like to call “strange bedfellows” – the users, customers and partners that bring new perspectives to drive creativity.
The era of flying solo is over – it’s about ecosystems now
We’re witnessing the end of “command-and-control” partnering strategies. New Smart Systems solutions are setting the stage for visionary companies to step into the role of “system orchestrators” to facilitate open collaboration.
Creative contention drives business design
The technology architecture to realize new customer experiences and the business architecture that supports it must be mutually supportive. The relationship between these dimensions drives contention but is fertile ground for innovation.
We all need to think and act differently
Organizations have many rules and policies that are often disconnected – a triumph of technique over value. Companies need to resist Byzantine processes that allow good ideas to fade too quickly.
HOW WE WORK WITH CLIENTS
It is often unavoidable that a company turns to outsiders for help with forward thinking, strategy and solutions design and development. Often this help is of three kinds: industry analysis, strategic consulting and design facilitation.Each of these types of advisor tends to have its own strengths and limitations:
- Greater distance and objectivity often give the industry or tech analyst a better view of the competitive landscape than the client can develop alone. The analysts, though, are often so specialized in the study of specific technologies and industry arenas that they usually offer little in the way of processes for making use of their knowledge.
- General management and strategy consultants, on the other hand, offer plenty of processes and methods —perhaps too much.
- Design firms bring new processes for discovery, ideation and design, but often lack skills to address the diverse business dimensions that are required to justify investment.
We think this has two crucial effects on new business development teams and solution developers:
- First, they need better methods and processes to support an effective end-to-end process.
- Second, while they are more likely to consult with outside advisors, they also need new, more creative and effective modes of interaction with them.
Our approach organizes domain knowledge while facilitating frequent and creative interactions to catalyze decision-making. Our goal is to push the boundaries of current practices and include many diverse and unfamiliar participants and points of view – what we like to call “strange bedfellows”.We believe its about providing deep domain knowledge, market analysis, strategy development and creative design services in a new integrated delivery approach designed to help growth teams make smart, fast, best-informed strategic and solution development decisions.
