Pinpointing Patterns

Strategic risk, which is increasingly important to corporations, is concerned with one overriding question: Can the firm's business design deliver sustained, above-average growth in shareholder value? Thus, when investors spot strategic risks that threaten a company's health, they react swiftly and decisively - at times with devastating results. But companies can avoid or manage these strategic risks - if they anticipate them. Pattern thinking represents a new sense-and-respond approach that is more effective in both characterizing risk and identifying and exploiting new profit opportunities.