This document discusses key topics for business leaders to consider when developing strategies, including how to create an environment that drives innovation, analyzing future opportunities, and gaining a competitive advantage. It emphasizes understanding customers, competitors, and industry trends to formulate a strategy and outlines frameworks like PESTEL analysis, Porter's five forces, and the BCG matrix to evaluate the business environment and portfolio. The role of the leader is to communicate vision, motivate teams, set goals, and ensure outstanding results through strategic planning.

1. LEVERAGING INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
In solving poverty and its symptoms in Africa
RESEARCH
&
SUSTAINABILITY
LEARNING
DIGITAL
PRODUCT
INCUBATION
ACCELERATION
info@ekoinnovationhub.com
PURPOSE
Professional skills
training
- Data School
- Media School
Commercialize &
scale high-impact
businesses
Drive social-impact
products
addressing SDGs
Accelerate idea-to-
commercialization
curve

2. • HOW LEADERS GET RESULTS.
• HOW TO CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT
DRIVES INNOVATION.
• KEYWAYS TO MOTIVATE, MOBILIZE, AND
ENLIST OTHERS AS A CREATOR OF POSITIVE
RESULTS.
• ANALYZING FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES TO
FORMULATE STRATEGY.

3. GROW BEYOND ENTREPRENEURSHIP; BECOME A LEADER
Dr. Dipo Awojide

4. Overview
•Role of Business Leaders
•How Leaders get results
•How to create an environment that drives innovation
•Analysing future opportunities to create strategies

5. THE ROLE OF BUSINESS LEADERS
Leadership is about human relationship and the best leaders are relationship builders.
Business is war and in war the goal is to win.
The most important role of business leaders is to get outstanding results.
As a leader, the buck stops on your table. Take ownership and responsibility.
Craft the competitive strategy
Share the vision and mission
Inspire and motivate
Hire and fire

6. HOW LEADERS GET RESULTS
Communicate, and encourage open communication
Motivate and Inspire
Set achievable goals
Invest in your team
Engage and empower your team
Create a fun environment
Delegate
Build trust

7. HOW TO CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT DRIVES
INNOVATION
Avoid micro-management, and give credit when due
Improve the work process
Be open minded and listen
Create a solid organisational structure

8. ANALYZING FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES TO FORMULATE
STRATEGY

9. Gaining and Sustaining a Competitive Advantage
Strategy
“A broad formula for how a business is going to compete, what its goals should be, and what policies will be
needed to carry out those goals.” (Michael Porter, 1980).
Strategy refers to a general plan of action for achieving goals and objectives.
A pattern of resource deployments (Mintzberg, 1978).
Competitive Advantage
If a company’s strategy results in superior performance, it is said to have a competitive advantage. CA generally
comes from an ability to meet customer needs more effectively, with products or services that customers value
more highly thus willing to pay more for or more efficiently, at a lower cost translating to higher sales volume.
Sustainable Competitive Advantage
An organisation achieves sustainable competitive advantage when it can meet customer needs more efficiently
than rivals and when the basis for this is durable, despite the best efforts of competitors to match or surpass this
advantage.

10. Macro Environmental Analysis (PESTEL)

12. The Five Forces Framework

13. Competitor Profiling: Your Value Proposition (USP)
The ability to generate profit depends on the intensity of the competition among businesses. Hence, a you must
understand competitors.
For a small business to make profit, it must create value for customers. Hence, it must understand its customers.
Our focus is on the competitive advantages of rival companies.

14. Understanding the Industry:
Industry or Product Lifecycle
An industry (or market segment within an industry) goes through four basic phases of development, each of
which has implications for strategy.
The distinct stages of an industry life cycle are: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline stage.

15. Industry Life Cycle and its Strategy Implications

16. Customer Profiling
Customer profiling describes the main characteristics of the customer and how customers make their purchasing
decisions
Important because an understanding of why customers buy will indicate to an organisation where they need to
develop and sustain their competitive advantages.
It is vital to analyse future customers a well as the current customer profile.
Key point: Competitive analysis is important in strategy, but ultimately it is the customers who make the buying
decision.

17. Portfolio Analysis: BCG Matrix

18. First Mover Advantage: Blue Ocean Strategy?
There is substantial empirical evidence that the first company into a new market has the most substantial
strategic advantage.
Although there are clearly risks in early market entry, there may also be long term advantages that deserve
careful consideration in strategic development.
Being first typically enables a company to establish strong brand recognition and customer loyalty before
competitors enter the arena. Other advantages include additional time to perfect its product or service and
setting the market price for the new item.

19. FUTURE DECISIONS: Merge, acquire, concentrate, divest?
Google acquired HTC’s smartphone design division for $1.1 billion.
Coca Cola acquired Costa Coffee for $3.5 billion earlier this year.
Lenovo acquired Motorola for $3 billion.
Foxconn acquired Sharp for $4 billion.

20. References and Recommended Reading
Coulter, M., 2005. Strategic management in action. Pearson Prentice Hall.
Lynch, R., 2015. Strategic Management. 7th ed. Harlow: Pearson.
Johnson, G., Scholes, K., and Whittington, R., 2008. Exploring corporate strategy: Text and cases. 8th ed. Pearson
Education.
Mintzberg, H., 1978. Patterns in strategy formation. Management Science, 24(9), 934–948.
Mintzberg, H., 1987. Crafting strategy. Harvard Business Review, July –August, 66-75.
Schoemaker, P., 2002, Profiting from uncertainty. Free Press.
Schoemaker, P., 1995, Scenario planning: A tool for strategic thinking. MIT Sloan Management review.
Wilkinson, A., and Kupers, R., 2013, Living in the futures. Harvard Business Review.