Three ideas for creating new value through managing risk in today’s dynamic environment

Purpose – The hyper-competitive environment clearly places a premium on innovation, entrepreneurship and adaptability. Less obvious is the premium that it also places on new approaches to identifying and managing risk and the hidden opportunities for value creation that lie therein. This masterclass aims to identify three books that show how risk management produces new opportunities for advantage. Design/methodology/approach – The masterclass discusses the approaches to risk management offered in The Risk-Driven Business Model by technology and innovation experts, Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine; in Niraj Dawar’s book, Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers and in The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age by Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn, and his co-authors Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh. Findings – Key choices you make in designing your business models will either increase or decrease two important types of risk, information risk and incentive-alignment risk. Downstream activities “aimed” at reducing customers’ costs and risks are rapidly emerging as the new “drivers” of value creation and competitiveness. Practical implications – The “central principle” underlying the new approach to talent risk management is “reciprocity” or mutual investment and obligation as a way of mitigating risk to both employer and employee […] The most innovative implementation practice is hiring employees for defined “tours of duty,” a concept borrowed from the military. Originality/value – This masterclass discusses three different approaches to managing risk and explains how they can be used to create customer value in a hyper-competitive environment.