Creating a winning organization and business model.

It takes a business architect to take an innovative business idea into a successful venture and achieve lasting business success.

The growing role of business architect

In today's knowledge - and innovation-driven complex economy, business architects are in growing demand. To build a winning synergistically integrated organization, companies need cross-functionally excellent people who can tie several silos of business development expertise together, create synergies, design a winning business model and a balanced business system and then lead people who will put their plans into action.

Sustainable business models

Sustainable business success is based not on great ideas, guts, or instinct alone – but on your ability to create an master your business model. In the new era of unrelenting change and competition, your face a daunting challenge: how to sustain the business model of your firm.

Sadly, mature companies often forget or forsake the thing that made them successful in the first place: a customer-centric business model. They lose focus on the customer and start focusing on the bottom line and quarterly results. They look for ways to cut costs or increase revenues, often at the expense of the customer. They forget that satisfying customer needs and continuous value innovation is the only path to sustainable growth. This creates opportunities for new, smaller companies to emulate and improve upon what made their bigger competitors successful in the first place and steal their customers.

The fact is, no matter how bulletproof your firm's current business model, it will be challenged by new business models. The new reality is that business models have shorter shelf life. You must constantly attempt to discover new business models if you hope to survive and grow.

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6Ws of corporate growth

To achieve sustainable corporate growth, you and your people should live the principles of 6Ws of corporate corporate growth. The "Six Ws" – what, why, who, when, where and how – are very powerful words. Use them constantly to seek, either from yourself or from others, the answers needed to manage effectively.

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Strategies for leading breakthroughs

So what separates extraordinary leaders from proponents of the status quo? They break the rules. Except, not in an arbitrary or capricious way. When you look at examples of extraordinary leadership, like the Founding Fathers of the United States or Jack Welch of GE, certain practices or principles become apparent. To start, there is a declaration of what the future will be. There is also a purpose, something to stand for. And finally, there is a clearly articulated commitment.

Building an innovation-friendly organization

Leaders of successful, high-growth companies understand that innovation is what drives growth, and innovation is achieved by awesome people with a shared relentless growth attitude and shared passion for creative problem solving and for turning ideas into realities.

Companies that continuously innovate will create and re-invent new markets, products, services, and business models – which leads to more growth. Innovation is founded on your enterprise's ability to recognize market opportunities, your internal capabilities to respond innovatively, and your knowledge base.

Leading systemic innovation

Innovation is the key driver of competitive advantage, growth, and profitability. Today, innovation is systemic. It arises from complex interactions between many individuals, organizations and their operating environment. Firms which are successful in realizing the full returns from their technologies and innovations are able to match their technological developments with complementary expertise in other areas of their business, such as manufacturing, distribution, human resources, marketing, and customer service.

There are many parts of the whole field of innovation: strategy innovation, new product development, creative approaches to problem solving, idea management, suggestion systems, etc. Though all of these components are important, in the new era of systemic innovation, you must design your firm's innovation process holistically. Innovation is not divisible – ‘good in parts’ is no good at all. Innovation systems are only as strong as their weakest links.

Business architect definition

Business architects can be found in a multitude of business settings: corporate change leaders, initiators of joint ventures, managers of radical innovation projects, in-company ventures, spin-outs, or new start-up ventures.

Although the settings in which business architects act are different, they all design and run a new venture to achieve its sustainable growth.

Market leadership strategies

The market leader is dominant in its industry and has substantial market share. If you want to lead the market, you must be the industry leader in developing new business models and new products or services. You must be on the cutting edge of new technologies and innovative business processes. Your customer value proposition must offer a superior solution to a customers' problem, and your product must be well differentiated.

Integrated approach to the management process

The integrated business systems approach to business development and the management process is what distinguishes modern cross-functionally excellent business architects from functional managers. As a business architect and an extremely effective leader, you must have a broad view to be able to link together – synergistically! – the key components of corporate success – from functional planning to cross-functional cooperation, from supply chain management to customer value creation, from the art of continuous learning to the practice of effective communication and influencing people – and bundle them in an intellectual, innovative and pragmatic package that can be used to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and business growth, both top-line and bottom-line.

To fulfil these responsibilities, a Business Architect typically should have broad cross-functional expertise.

Power of your cross-functional excellence

If you build broad cross-functional expertise, no idea will be wasted! Your mind can accept only those ideas that have a frame of reference with your existing knowledge. It rejects everything else. If your knowledge is functionally focused, you'll be open to new ideas related to your functional expertise only and will miss all other learning and innovation opportunities. If you develop a broad cross-functional expertise, no new idea will be wasted. It will immediately connect with the existing knowledge and will inspire you, energize you, and encourage your entrepreneurial creativity. The broader your net, the more fish you catch.

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Rise of IT architect

IT architects are in growing demand. They are cross-functionally excellent people who can "tie several silos of expertise together," relate to business problems as well as technology, and then sell their ideas upward and downward in the corporate hierarchy. "Enterprise architects aren't just technology experts; they are leaders with broad IT knowledge, the savvy to apply it to business problems and the communication skills necessary to coordinate the people who will put their plans into action," says Bill Liguori, senior vice president and co-founder of the placement firm Leadership Capital Group.

Systems thinking and modern management

The goal of systems thinking is to manage the rapidly growing complexity of the worlds of business and technology. The task of a business architect and a process manager is to create systems, within a sensibly structured business, that empowers employees and enables people to achieve higher productivity and greater competitive advantage.

Systems thinking characterizes many of the world's leading executives. It is a formal discipline of management science that deals with the whole business system and in terms of the interconnections and interactions of its parts.

"Many managers fail to see the forest for the trees. This is not an either/or problem. The trick is to see both the forest and the trees. Systems thinking is a methodology for doing both simultaneously. It's more than a methodology, it's like learning a new language and takes nearly as long as learning a foreign language to achieve maturity." (Botkin, 1999)

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Topics related to "Business architect"

Business architect

Business architects develop the architecture and the business model for a business enterprise and typically have the following role-specific responsibilities:

Create a new or improve the current business model and business architecture.
- Identify and develop a business case and sustainable growth strategies.
- Create an effective and efficient organization.
- Develop new enterprise-wide business process models.
- Determine the mechanisms by which all these components will collaborate in order to fulfill its innovation, operational and quality requirements.
- Build a team and lead the implementation process.
Develop and communicate a strategy for relationships with other organizations and endeavors.
Develop business transition and communication plans, and communicate the new business architecture.

Business architect is a person that initiates new business ventures or leads business innovation, designs a winning business model, and builds a sustainable balanced business system for a lasting success. In today's knowledge- and innovation-driven complex economy, business architects are in growing demand. They are cross-functionally excellent people who can tie several silos of business development expertise together, create synergies, design winning business model and a balanced business system and then lead people who will put their plans into action.