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SHANGHAI (Nov. 4, 2019) ― Alan Lewis, a partner and member of the Global Leadership Team at L.E.K. Consulting, presented the latest insights into Edge Strategy before an audience in Shanghai, at events hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in China and China Europe International Business School.

Based on the framework introduced in Edge Strategy: A New Mindset for Profitable Growth, co-authored by Lewis and published by Harvard Business Review Press, the presentations were well-received and included in-depth discussions with management from companies representing various industries and sizes, and with students and alumni from the Executive Master of Business Administration, Global Executive MBA and MBA programs at CEIBS.

Combining L.E.K.’s analysis and research with live business cases, Edge Strategy illustrates the eponymous growth strategy in great detail, it analyzes a variety of edge achievers in a profound and comprehensive manner, and demonstrates the practical effects of the edge mindset. For the Shanghai audience, Lewis introduced the concept of Edge Strategy, and elaborated, further developing the framework by including the latest cases from the local Chinese market.

The business environment changes rapidly nowadays, and according to Lewis, edge opportunities can be found in every industry. Driven by factors like margin pressure and commoditization, companies tend to either adopt growth strategies with great risks, developing or entering into new areas to gain high returns, or take conservative measures focusing too narrowly on their current core businesses. The fact is, however, growth opportunities often hide at the edge of these core businesses. Edge Strategy is the pathway to avail oneself of those opportunities hidden in plain sight.

Compared with traditional ways to grow, uncovering edge opportunities allows companies to utilize existing assets from their core businesses. Companies are able to achieve a higher success rate and high returns with lower risks, without significant upfront investments or complexity in execution. Yet as Lewis explained, although edge opportunities can be found in every industry, a study of more than 600 companies from over 60 industries has shown that only 10% appear to internalize the edge mindset, take full advantage of opportunities around their core businesses and outperform their competitors.

Highlighting a wide range of successful business cases from global and Chinese markets, and approaching from the perspectives of product edge, journey edge and enterprise edge, Lewis elaborated how companies can use ancillary products and services to complete the circle of interactions with customers, play a more important role in the customer journey and fully leverage their existing assets. The speeches aroused heated discussions from the AmCham and CEIBS audiences around the practice of Edge Strategy in solving specific issues that companies are facing today, and around the edge mindset’s great potential to seed new businesses in this highly digitalized and innovation-driven world by activating the value embedded in data.

For more information about Edge Strategy, visit: https://edgestrategybook.com/
To view Chinese translated information about Edge Strategy, click here.