As a consultant, I’ve always sought to take business strategy a step further. That’s why I’ve developed the concept of tridextrous companies, an evolution of the ambidextrous company model. The key? Incorporating a third essential component: UNusual anticipation.
While an ambidextrous company focuses on balancing exploitation (efficient operations in the present) and exploration (innovation for the future), tridextrous companies add a proactive element. It’s about foreseeing future challenges-threats and opportunities, something indispensable in today’s dynamic business environment.
Key Components of Tridextrous Companies
To better understand this concept, let’s look at its fundamental pillars:
- UNusual Anticipation: This isn’t just about predicting, but rather proactively preparing for future disruptions to gain competitive advantages. It goes beyond the current industry, seeking life cycles for key elements of business models.
- Strategic Futurism: Utilizing methodologies to explore possible future scenarios and their implications for our current strategies.
- Disruptive Innovation: Innovations where the value proposition is built on the principle that fewer functionalities are better. A concept masterfully proposed by Dr. Clayton Christensen, a Harvard professor.
- Scenario Planning: Developing plans for multiple plausible future scenarios to ensure preparedness and strategic flexibility.
- UNusual Companies: A concept that goes hand-in-hand with tridextrous companies. These are organizations that expand their performance metrics beyond financial profitability. They embrace the continuous improvement of their employees’ quality of life and activate positive impact actions in their social environment. This aligns with the operating principles of dissipative structures proposed by Dr. Ilya Prigogine (Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1977).
Ambidextrous Companies vs. Tridextrous Companies
For me, an ambidextrous company is one that simultaneously activates actions to strengthen its current systems and processes, while at the same time designing and building better futures within its own industry.
Source: Author’s own elaboration
But the tridextrous company, a term I coined, is an ambidextrous company that embraces an additional dimension. It explores and monitors the environment to detect when the industry it operates in is at risk of extinction, collapse, or obsolescence, either globally or regionally. This includes anticipating whether key inputs or required talent for the company might disappear, threatening its viability or even causing its demise.
The Future Perspective
The implementation of the operating principles of tridextrous companies will be greatly strengthened by advances in Big Data processing and Artificial Intelligence. This will make predictive analysis much more effective.
To illustrate this point, I will reproduce, with the due permission of its author, Said Elias Dawlabani, a graph from his book Second Sapiens (Available on Amazon:
Understanding Life Curves: A Tridextrous Approach
To better understand this graph, we’ll view it with some adjustments and colors for this blog. We’ll be guided by the colored stars with different letters.
Your company may currently be at any of the points on the three life cycles shown:
- The central curve is the solid black line.
- The other two curves are gray with dotted lines:
- The one with the green star with the letter «A» represents an ingredient of your business model that is in decline.
- The other dotted line starting at the brown star with the letter «B» shows the birth of a new cycle, which contains the ingredients that, over time, will make the solid black curve irrelevant or obsolete.
- The horizontal axis records both the passage of time and the natural changes that arise in the social and competitive environment.
Critical Moments for the Tridextrous Company
Let’s focus our attention on the green star with the letter «A». If your company is in that location, on that declining dotted curve, you will surely experience a significant slowdown over time. What might have happened is that you failed to timely identify the birth of a new curve or a new business model that would eventually make yours obsolete, which has already entered a stage of diminishing returns.
If you observe that descending dotted line, it has a connection (nexus) at point 4 of the solid black curve. A valid question is whether it will be feasible to stop «following» the declining gray dotted curve and opportunely switch at this strategic bifurcation to the solid black curve exactly at point 4, despite not having gone through the previous steps (1, 2, and 3).
An important point is that on the solid black curve, between points 2 and 5, where the light blue stars with the letter «C» are located, accelerated performance growth is reflected. When this happens, Said Dawlabani notes in his book that it becomes a new paradigm and everything prior becomes irrelevant. Therefore, it is highly probable that if your company is on the «A->D->E» trajectory, you and your team will not be able to «see» that opportunity to make a radical change in business model and, very likely, in industry, leading to obsolescence and subsequent collapse (purple star E).
If this happens, you will reach the intersection of dotted curves at the gray star with the letter «D» inside. This is another bifurcation and a clear opportunity to change to embrace a new emerging paradigm that few have detected. Interestingly, it is at this intersection, shown by the gray star «D», where it is most likely to make change decisions, even with the few resources available. If this change is not made and the company reaches the purple star with the letter «E» inside, it will practically be on the verge of collapse.
Morning, Afternoon, and Night Projects
If we return to point 1 of the solid black line, we will see that a little earlier in time, there is a brown star with the letter «B» inside. It’s interesting, because at that juncture, we could experience what Dr. Daniel Meade (professor and researcher at Tecnológico de Monterrey) calls morning, afternoon, and night projects. In this case:
- The morning project is represented by the green star «A», which is currently our «cash cow» and cash flow generator.
- The afternoon project corresponds to point 1, the beginning of the solid black line.
- The night project is a gamble with possible long-term results, and one that few people will actually be able to see, let alone decide to invest in exploring that path. This strategic bet is inherently UNusual in nature.
Example in the automotive industry:
- Morning projects: Internal combustion cars (green star A)
- Afternoon projects: Electric cars (solid black curve)
- Night projects: Hydrogen cars (brown star B)
Over time, this sequence could be updated as follows:
- Morning projects: Electric cars + remaining internal combustion
- Afternoon projects: Hydrogen cars
- Night projects: ?… Will they be NO cars?
The Tridextrous Company in Action
What we have just described is precisely a tridextrous company:
It is an ambidextrous company:
- Star «A»: Strengthening the present.
- Point 1: Designing and building better futures.
- Star «B»: The UNusual anticipation of the emergence of a new cycle or business model that will be distant and distinct from known or «usual» business models (represented by Star «A»).
And the reality is that the dotted gray curve starting at star «B» can be identified thanks to disciplined research of events in the environment, inside and outside the current industry (star «A») or a related emerging industry at point 1. In addition to disciplined research and documentation, there will be room for imagination and intuition to shape the possible new opportunities to be addressed in the night projects.
Image adapted from Second Sapiens by Said Dawlabani (I added the curve that starts at star L)
Continuity of Anticipation
If you observe, when the solid black line cycle reaches its peak and already shows the first symptoms of diminishing returns, at that moment this curve will be what we identify as morning projects. Star «D» will represent the beginning of more accelerated performance, now in the role of afternoon projects. It will surely be opportune to activate new night projects at star «L», which few people will detect in time… and so on and so forth, permanently.
The next key transition will be when the dotted gray line, through the stage between stars «F->J->G», and point 8 of the solid line will be the beginning of its decline, followed by points 9 and 10. Between stars G and H, it will already be the curve that represents the morning projects.
The following image represents how we can view UNusual Tridextrous Companies as an extension of the ambidextrous company model.
Source: Author’s own elaboration
One of Said Dawlabani’s main contributions is that the subsequent cycles will not necessarily be better than the previous ones. This can be reviewed in more detail in his book, and we will consider explaining it in another blog or podcast.
Conclusion
Tridextrous companies are not just a concept; they are a sophisticated approach to strategic management. They emphasize proactive and UNusual anticipation and the documentation of possible future events and scenarios. Their success also depends on the implementation of informed innovation processes, with the intuition of your company’s strategic design team as an honored guest.
Proposal
At Novarum Mexico, we have been applying these concepts to anticipate risks in different industries. We offer to facilitate prospective workshops to co-create scenarios with entrepreneurs involved in the industry or industries they are interested in anticipating the future in UNusual ways, and being proactive in designing and building better futures for both their industry and their companies.
We would be happy to discuss with you, or your business organizations, to explore the application of the concepts presented here, in a clear and practical way, to facilitate timely decision-making, before obsolescence or, worse yet, collapse reaches you.
The opportunity to innovate in an UNusual way is now, and it is within reach of all our readers, clients, and friends. Contact Novarum: Roberto Bonilla WhatsApp +52 477 7543244, please send a message with this text: «Tridextrous Companies and UNusual Anticipation,» and I will gladly contact you to schedule an appointment and present this powerful tool to capitalize on the uncertainty and volatility of the competitive environment as a source of energy to revitalize your company or industry.
Your comments are welcome.
Complementary Information:
- Introduction to Second Sapiens (Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKYQ0dCtAsk&t=937s
- Book Presentation (English): Second Sapiens with Said Dawlabani https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-FYjB840a4&t=227s
- UNusual Business Models: https://novarum.mx/podcast/modelos-de-negocio-innusuales-y-la-sostenibilidad-de-tu-empresa/
- Strategy and the Destiny of Nations: https://novarum.mx/podcast/estrategia-y-el-destino-de-las-naciones/
- Why is Entropy Destroying Your Company?: https://novarum.mx/podcast/por-que-la-entropia-esta-acabando-con-tu-negocio/
- Unlocking Creativity: How to Overcome Obstacles to Innovation: https://novarum.mx/desbloqueando-la-creatividad-como-superar-los-obstaculos-a-la-innovacion/
- The Certainty of Uncertainty: https://novarum.mx/la-certidumbre-de-la-incertidumbre/
- Intuition the source of true knowing, by Jeffrey Mishlove published in Noetic Sciences Review Spring 1994
- The intuition network http://www.intuition.org/
