Looking Fourth... & The Blog

 

& The Blog... Looking Fourth

Why is this blog called Looking Fourth?

This is a supplement to my personal side project, The 4th Horizon.

For the last nine years I have been working with Microsoft in all things to do with digital strategy and digital transformation. What became apparent is that the majority of customers, large and established businesses, were struggling with the practicality of trying to identify, prioritise and execute transformation projects grounded in technology.

A small team combined and adapted concepts like McKinsey Three Horizon Modelx and Geoffrey Moore's horizons as laid out in his work "Zone to Win"x.

Every model and framework has strengths and constraints are they are more or less relevant depending on the context.

"All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    George Box, 1976                        

So, whilst both horizon models have merit they both have constraints, not necessarily of design but of perception.

• McKinsey Three Horizons: many people interpreted these as planning horizons. When ideas will be ready, or when ideas will need to be considered
• Zone to Win: Mr. Moore does an excellent job of framing the horizons by production, transformation and incubation. Many people focus on the financial dimensions associated, cost to execute and revenue of the resulting business idea.

Now we need to consider the context of what we were trying to achieve inside Microsoft. Economies of scale and OPEX driven experimentation fundamentally change the dynamics at play. Take an incumbent bank that wants to spin up a challenger digital brand.

Before hyperscale public cloud, Banking-as-a-Service solutions like Mambu running on public cloud the time, cost and effort of a bank setting up a digital venture would indeed be large. Now the hurdles to overcome to setup an experiment and see what is possible before incubating such an endeavour are significantly lower. In theory something that would historically have taken 3 years and multiple millions of dollars can be done in six months at a fraction of the cost. And better yet, if the experiment is not successful you can simple turn it off, no upfront CAPEX for hardware and sunk cost in long and protracted tenders.

The basic framework of the Microsoft Three Horizon Model looks something like this below:

Very, very occasionally you would find yourself in a discussion where what the client is trying to aspire to, their transformative agenda, is market changing or market making. Unfortunately those were few and far between. You all have your personal examples, those "zero to one"x businesses you think of.

So where then do other clients get their ideas from? this is what I started to think of as the 4th Horizon. This blog, and my side project, is all about sharing ideas, methods, thought provoking reading of where you might just go looking for some of those ideas to inspire your own transformation or new corporate venture.

Making room for this 4th Horizon looks something like this:

& The Blog.... Looking Fourth will be one way of me sharing my experience, thought processes and sense making approach with you. For everything else let's have a conversation.

David

Founder, 4th Horizon &

References:

1. Enduring Ideas: the three horizons of growth, McKinsey Quarterly here

2. Geoffrey Moore at gotocon on Zone to Win here

3. Peter Thiel's Zero to One: Notes of Startups, or How to Build the Future here