How to get ahead of the game: Wargaming for business

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Björn Dufwenberg, Managing Director on the STRAT7 Advisory team, explains the concept of wargaming and how this approach can help navigate uncertainty and envision future market landscapes.

Rather than simply reacting to shifting trends and changing consumer behaviours, businesses can find ways to get ahead of the game. Here’s how…

If you’re face-to-face with a lion, it’s already too late

Making predictions is crucial for businesses to avoid being caught off guard by shifting trends, competitor strategies and changing customer behaviours.

In today’s interconnected and rapidly changing global marketplace, traditional approaches are no longer sufficient. Businesses must view these shifts as opportunities for growth and innovation.

Rather than being defensive and reactive, organisations are better served by actively seeking ways to leverage emerging trends and customer preferences to their advantage.

To achieve this, traditional human-centric methods (market research and customer feedback), must be combined with innovative tools and technologies to provide the right foresight.

Integrating predictive analytics into strategic planning processes allows businesses to assess scenarios and identify potential inflection points, making it possible to develop multiple plans, capitalise on opportunities and mitigate risks.

Time for a cultural shift

By combining analytical approaches with creative thinking, it is possible to more effectively navigate uncertainty and envision future market landscapes.

It is this sort of thinking, which leverages market inflection points at the perfect moment, that has propelled businesses such as Uber, Amazon and Tesla. They flipped the logic of their categories by better understanding future trends.

Wargaming, as the name suggests, a methodology most typically used in military strategy, is a good analogy for such a process. By using predictive analytics to simulate different and realistic scenarios and considering the potential outcomes, organisations can effectively anticipate change and make proactive decisions to steer towards the most desirable scenario.

This approach allows businesses to stress-test their strategies, identify vulnerabilities and risks, and explore different options. It’s a process that encourages critical thinking, collaboration and flexibility, enabling teams to be better prepared in the context of a rapidly changing business environment.

It has the power to bring together individuals from different departments and levels of expertise, fostering a collective intelligence that can uncover unique insights and innovative ideas. By breaking down silos and encouraging open dialogue, businesses can leverage the diverse perspectives of their teams to gain a comprehensive understanding of the market landscape.

Making it happen

To successfully implement such a process, organisations need to invest in the necessary resources and expertise. As a first step, speak to our experts in strategic foresight and scenario planning who have the capability to guide teams through the process, ensuring that the exercises are well-designed, relevant, and yield actionable insights.

It is also important for businesses to recognise that scenario planning in this fashion is not a one-time event but an ongoing practice. By their nature, markets are dynamic, and new challenges and opportunities will continue to arise. By regularly revisiting and updating their scenario planning exercises, organisations can stay ahead of the curve and adapt their strategies as needed.

The world continues to change, but the businesses that embrace this new approach will be better equipped to navigate its complexities. It is an investment in long-term success and a testament to an organisation’s commitment to innovation and adaptability. And it must be embraced – because the future only belongs to those who are prepared.

If you would like to chat ‘wargaming strategies’ for you and your business, please get in touch

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Joe Lockey

Senior Analyst

Joe joined us after completing rotations across our consumer, services and health sectors, whilst gaining exposure to both qualitative and quantitative research techniques.

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Alice Hedlund

Principal

Alice has experience in customer-centric growth, brand strategy and innovation at global scale. She specialises in brand transformation journeys, bridging the gap between business and brand strategy to create holistic and actionable plans for impactful growth.

Helen Donald

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Tom Carvell

Principal

Tom has a science background with a PhD in Materials Chemistry. He has spent most of his career working on in-house front-end innovation where he delivered mid/long term strategic projects for brands such as Durex, Scholl, Veet and KY. He is focussed on delivering pragmatic but provocative innovation strategy for CPG categories.

Manick Pratheeban

Senior Principal

Manick is a brand strategy and consumer insight specialist with 15+ years’ experience helping to grow some of the world’s biggest brands. He has a proven track record of translating trends, consumer, and market data into actionable insights to formulate growth strategies.

Kate Jones

Senior Principal

Kate has over a decade of experience in creating transformative strategies for customer-focused businesses. With a background in consumer insight and behaviour change across consumer health, packaged goods, leisure, banking and other sectors she focuses on elevating the customer experience to create human-centric innovations and foster impactful growth.

Jacob Gascoine-Becker

Partner

Jacob specialises in leveraging consumer research to inform investment strategy and business case development. A management consultant since 2014, he previously spent eight years working in ecommerce and digital marketing.

Ines Achabal

Senior Analyst

Ines is inately curious and creative. She is known for her expansive thinking when exploring client challenges and elevating the visual quality of outputs to maximise their impact.

Helene Mills

Partner

Helene has 20+ years’ experience advising business leaders and investors on growth strategy based upon consumer and market intelligence. Her particular specialism lies in leisure, retail, food and beverage sectors.

Helen Donald

Helen Donald

Partner

Helen has consulted businesses at different stages of growth across a variety of sectors, specialising in consumer packaged goods and consumer healthcare. She is an adept strategist, bringing clarity to the most complex of situations and connecting dots to create rich, future-proofed platforms for innovation, brand positioning and growth.

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Allan Chen

Senior Principal

Allan’s core skillset provides an analytical and commercial lens to address client challenges. He started his career as an actuary, and since then has held a broad range of strategic roles, improving performance across the private and public sector.

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Björn Dufwenberg

Managing Director​

Björn has 15+ years’ experience in insight-driven transformation, across management consulting, as well as brand and innovation agency roles. Most recently he headed up the Customer-Led Transformation practice at PwC Sweden, until joining STRAT7 in 2021. He’s worked on global projects covering consumer goods, durables, spirits and beverages, retail, banking, and private equity.

Kamilla Dala

Senior Principal

Kamilla has 10+ years’ experience leading and implementing insight-driven transformation within global matrix organisations in durable and consumable goods. Areas of expertise cover segmentation, uncovering and translating actionable consumer insights within innovation, product development, brand positioning, strategy and marketing.