About the Business Genome®

The Business Genome® project

The Business Genome® approach is a revolutionary view of business innovation. Through years of groundbreaking research of industry trends, interviews with many of the nation’s leading CEO’s, and the analysis of in-depth case studies from companies such as KPMG, P.F. Chang’s, Royal Dutch Shell, Hyatt Hotels, General Motors’ OnStar, and Allstate Financial, the Business Genome® process has been developed to quite literally change the way businesses adapt and succeed in today’s rapidly evolving environment.

The Business Genome® approach employs cross-industry research using business genomic patterns shared by companies in different industries to ‘unearth’ opportunities that previously had not been considered or even envisioned.

Unlike traditional methods of business predictors, like SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), the Business Genome® approach uses six genomic elements (product innovation, talent, trendability, process, customer impact, brand) in a four step process (sort, match your genome, hybridize, adapt and thrive) to help leaders in one business or industry to learn from leaders in other industries. The outcome enables companies to leapfrog their business innovation strategies in a manner that provides unprecedented insights into new sustainable revenues.

If a company is stalled in the midst of a competitive environment and floundering around looking for “innovation,” the answer will not be found by studying the competition and simply mimicking them. It will be found in answering tough questions like:

  • What do you do when what you’ve been doing is leading to flat sales or decreasing market share?
  • What should your next product be?
  • How can you capture a new market?
  • What can you learn from other companies in other industries with proven success?

The Business Genome® approach provides the answers in an unprecedented manner that will amaze you.

Differentiation

The business universe faces new urgencies and a new set of realities:

  • Business in moving faster than ever before
  • Customers are networked with each other and expect transparency and two-way interactions with the companies they support, interact with, and buy from.
  • Global dynamics are a new force for all companies

Businesses can no longer afford to use the traditional MBA tools like forecasting, benchmarking, and SWOT as their primary strategic guideposts for innovation. Today, innovation comes from cracking the code on the 'genome' of business.

The Business Genome® approach has cracked the code on innovation. It has identified six 'genomic' elements that can be recombined to focus every company on its 'Next': Product Innovation; Customer Impact; Process Design; Secret Sauce; Talent, Leadership and Culture, and; Trendability.

The Business Genome® project is doing for business what Pandora did for music and Netflix did for movies. It is truly innovating and enabling companies to look outside of their current industry for patterns of what really works in business innovation.

Inspiration (by Andrea Kates)

The Business Genome® project was developed by Andrea Kates who spent years leading strategy projects for more than 250 companies. Through development and implementation of these projects she identified a common set of characteristics that successful companies had in common and was determined to define them for everyone. This is an account of her inspiration in creating the Business Genome® project and writing the bestselling book, Find Your Next (McGraw Hill).

“For years, I worked with leaders of Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, mid-sized companies representing virtually every industry from manufacturing to consumer goods to hospitality. I noticed that the winning companies had something very unique in common. They were able to borrow ideas from outside their own industries to accelerate the path to growth. I also noticed that the ideas fell into categories that were dramatically different from the ones I’d learned in MBA training. I began to believe that there was a “genetic” pattern to their thinking.

A few years ago, with that perception in the forefront of my thinking, I was at the TED conference (ted.com : Technology, Entertainment and Design) and sat next to E.O. Wilson, the renowned biologist and author who was about to spawn a project he’d envisioned as a TED Prizewinner—the Encyclopedia of Life—a huge, open-source repository of biological information that warehouses data to be shared by scientists and other individuals trying to reach new insights about biology.

He turned to me and asked, “What would be your vision for a project of this magnitude?”

I explained my vision for building a Business Genome repository. Dr. Wilson responded positively, “That is precisely what business leaders seem to need—a combination of a taxonomy of what works with the metaphors from other industries of what might be possible.”

Following that breakfast, I visited with dozens of thought leaders including Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, Neal Hunt from Netflix, Peter Diamondis from the XPrize and Catherine Crier, journalist and best selling author.

As a result, I was inspired to write the book, Find Your Next, to gather in-depth Business Genome case studies from companies like P.F. Chang’s and GE ecomagination, and to enlist the sponsorship of the thought leaders at GM/OnStar to build the momentum.

We are building a repository of Business Genome examples that we invite the business community to help populate online. We have set a Diagnostic Survey in motion to fuel the repository engine and anxiously await the evolution of business as we know it.”