Fresh, New OPNS: The Strategy’s “Tactical Pivot” [29 pages]

Part #5 of The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy

An excerpt from the book, Aji, an IR#4 Business Philosophy

Design and execute a steady stream …

… of fresh, new Offers, Practices, Narratives and Strategies

… with highly valued marginal utilities

… that make them scarce relative to demand

What has come before in The Strategy …

In Part #1 of The Strategy businesspeople constitute their Life, Financial and Business Ambitions to enable them to design (1) commitments, (2) directions, (3) velocities and (4) focuses needed to fulfill them.

One of The Strategy’s “directions”, which enable businesspeople to earn a very high IR#4 Income, is to move towards learning and using The Strategy’s “Tactical Pivot”, all day, every day.

It is a set of fundamental practices that includes how to design an offer that is fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand in as little as 15 minutes.

In Parts #2 – #4 businesspeople learn philosophies of care and competition (#2), IR#4 Strategic Knowledge (#3) and Ethics of Power (#4), to produce the sequence of background knowledge they can use to begin making money with The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot.

•°•°•°•

Part #5 of The Strategy

The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot

Designing fresh, new Offers, Practices, Narratives, Strategies

To explain why Part #5 of The Strategy is its “Tactical Pivot” and how to use it to double productivity, value and incomes, let’s first go over a number of tactical, strategic and competitive distinctions that are part of “Aji’s” IR#4 Strategic Knowledge.

Distinctions are “strategic” when they can be used to:

1. Execute a strategy, or action plan, to produce outcomes that are fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand

2. Improve a strategy

3. Make a new strategy possible

What is a tactic?

A “tactic” is a practice used to execute a strategy, or action plan, such as tying a shoelace to get dressed or designing a fresh, new offer to make money.

Businesspeople use tactics to change a situation, or to avoid threats, fulfill obligations or exploit opportunities, to make progress towards fulfilling a strategy’s intentions.

A plan to increase revenues, for example, would include practices to:

1. Avoid or reduce threats to making highly profitable transactions such as a lack of marginal utility

2. Fulfill obligations or duties to keep existing customers, produce new customers and avoid triggering avoidable costs and risks, such as speaking with current customers to make sure they are satisfied and to see if they or their networks need more help

3. Exploit opportunities needed to execute the plan, such as new computer devices, applications, networks or offers

“Practices”, or named actions, are called “tactics” when they are used to execute an action plan because the intentions with which they are performed change fundamentally and become more complex.

How to design a practice, such as making a simple request for help, for example, is very easy to learn.

But the moment businesspeople need to design one to execute a strategy, which makes the request a tactic in their action plan, their intentions to design and speak their request, change.

Instead of intending to speak their request “correctly” so that it is complete and coherent, they need to speak it “tactically” so that it “advances action” to fulfill a strategic objective.

Producing the tactic’s outcome so that it advances strategic actions, instead of just “getting the job done”, makes putting together an otherwise simple request significantly different and more challenging.

The request needs to include every relevant concern, situation, capability and strategy a Listener will consider before they accept it.

It needs to include positive returns if they accept it and/or negative consequences if they decline.

The request needs to be effective, strategic and competitive enough to seduce or compel acceptance in that competitive situation.

The Strategy specifies the 12 fundamental strategic intentions every tactic needs to help businesspeople fulfill when trying to earn a living or become rich in IR#4. The moment IR#3 businesspeople begin using the 12 intentions, “everything” they learn, communicate, coordinate and produce, including their simple requests and even text messages, changes.

This is important for businesspeople to understand in IR#4 because computers and the internet make it possible to design and redesign specific strategies very quickly, or in as little as 15 minutes.

What is a tactical pivot?

A “tactical pivot” is a way of describing how people perform complex practices such as driving a car, dressing in the morning, making a presentation, running a business, building a career, holding a leadership role or designing a fresh, new offer, practice, narrative or strategy.

This notion is helpful, important and powerful because it enables businesspeople to use their computers, the internet and Networks of Capabilities effectively, strategically and competitively enough to earn a living or become rich in IR#4.

A “tactical pivot” is a set of practices, or methods to produce outcomes, people use (1) tactically, (2) easily, (3) effectively and (4) fluently to design, craft, speak about and execute a strategy.

IR#3 businesspeople and businesses are already familiar with specific tactical pivots used to operate single-purpose tools, but not with the fundamental tactical pivots used in “Aji” with computers and the internet.

Businesspeople are already familiar with specific tactical pivots (IR#3)

Specific tactical pivots are not new to IR#3 businesspeople or businesses. We all learn and use many of them throughout the day even if we don’t know there’s a name for them. They are what businesspeople used in IR#3 with each specific single-purpose tool, such as a telephone, copier, elevator, lathe, press, slide rule, hammer, coffee machine, etc.

When we drive our cars, for example, we use a specific tactical pivot. We perform about a dozen specific tactics easily, effectively and fluently, to execute our action plans to drive to different destinations.

We perform the practices “easily” because once we learn how to execute each tactic, such as accelerating, changing lanes or turning on the lights, it requires very little effort.

We perform them “effectively” because we can design how and when we use them in any given situation to fulfill our intentions to drive to a destination without difficulty.

We speak them “fluently” because if anyone sits next to us and asks what we are doing we can tell them every move we are making and why, which most people don’t realize they are doing when they drive a car.

We think of tactical pivots, such as driving our car or having a sales conversation, as one practice even though we are actually using, coordinating and performing sets of practices.

I call them a “tactical pivot” because we perform them by changing our focus and performance from one practice to another very quickly, or by pivoting our attention and action, to cope with different situations to execute action plans like driving to a store.

When we can perform them easily, effectively and fluently, we fulfill our intentions without noticing what we are doing.

It’s easy to understand why the tactical pivot is specific when we drive our car. It’s because we can’t use that specific tactical pivot with any other single-purpose tool, such as a projector, elevator, chain saw, stepladder or mold-making machine.

We don’t have to use turn signals or rearview mirrors to operate those single-purpose tools, right?

We know, culturally, to look for the small set of practices, or the tactical pivot, we need to learn in order to use a new single-purpose tool to fulfill our intentions.

When we buy a new single-purpose gizmo for our kitchen or desk, such as a toaster or pencil sharpener, don’t we all “know” that the first thing to do is learn how to operate it? And isn’t that also expected to show us what it can help us do or produce?

It’s no surprise, therefore, that businesspeople and businesses when they buy a computer or a new software application first try to learn its “tactical pivot”, or the skills needed, to fulfill normal IR#3 intentions with a single-purpose tool. What they do is study the operations manual for the application, which has nothing at all to do with how to use their computers and the internet tactically or strategically to make money, not to mention double their productivity, value and incomes.

The problem businesspeople and businesses have as long as they use IR#3 business philosophy is that their computers don’t have a predetermined “tactical pivot”. They aren’t single-purpose machines like a toaster or an industrial floor polisher that was designed to produce a specific outcome.

Learning how to operate computers and their applications doesn’t disclose how to use them to produce high IR#4 Incomes the same way learning how to operate a pencil sharpener also reveals how to use it to sharpen a pencil.

Task-oriented IR#3 businesspeople looking for tactical pivots that are predetermined as they are with single-purpose machines, view their computer as a collection of clever and fun single-purpose tools or really cool computerized Swiss Army Knives.

With this orientation every computer and application is a different set of enormous numbers of practices, or specific tactical pivots, businesspeople need to learn to “get their jobs done”, which is an impossible competitive situation.

The last time I checked there were more than 600,000 business and productivity applications in the two big application stores. No one can learn more than a few of them.

Because computers were not designed to fulfill a specific intention or single purpose the way bicycles and hot air balloons are, businesspeople and businesses first have to design or constitute their intentions for using computers and the internet, such as designing a new Business Narrative or executing The Strategy. Then they have to design or invent their own “tactical pivots”, or skills, to fulfill them using computers and the internet.

The strategic and competitive knowledge needed to do this was never invented because it wasn’t necessary or possible to invent during IR#3.

The knowledge needed is IR#4 Strategic Knowledge included in “Aji”.

Fundamental Tactical Pivots are new to most businesspeople

Whereas businesspeople in general are already deeply familiar culturally with specific tactical pivots needed to use single-purpose tools, “Aji’s” fundamental tactical pivot is a completely different category of philosophical business knowledge and is new to most businesspeople in IR#4.

It is a set of fundamental practices, or tactics, used to execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy in different competitive situations to fulfill financial, career and business intentions.

In IR#4, businesspeople use the same fundamental tactical pivots with their computers, their applications, and the internet rather than the specific pivots used in IR#3 with each single-purpose tool.

This enables businesspeople to think about and use their computers and the internet as a single tool, rather than a collection of hundreds of thousands of applications with thousands of different tactical pivots.

Using a fundamental tactical pivot to execute The Strategy effectively, strategically and competitively every time they design and execute fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies, regardless of the computer or application they use, increases businesspeople’s abilities to compete significantly, at the same time it drops their costs enormously.

“Aji’s” IR#4 Strategic Knowledge is chock-full of fundamental tactical pivots that can be used to fulfill each of The Strategy’s 12 intentions, such as how to constitute identities with a Business Narrative,

… but only one fundamental tactical pivot using four fundamental practices is necessary to begin executing The Strategy to fulfill all 12 strategic intentions.

This is amazing and changes “everything” for businesspeople.

Without this fundamental tactical pivot, IR#4 businesspeople cannot earn a living, or become rich and cannot be anything but completely overwhelmed by IR#4’s rapid changes and increasing complexity.

I call the set of fundamental practices used to begin executing The Strategy, “The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot”.

For example, businesspeople can design financial ambitions with a fundamental tactical pivot, but no matter how impressed they are by their own design, they won’t earn a penny with it until they learn the tactical skills to fulfill them.

What is The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot?

The first four fundamental practices in the “The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot” are how to design and execute a fundamental:

… that is (1) fresh, (2) new, (3) highly valued and (4) scarce relative to demand, or valuable,

… and can be used (5) strategically with Networks of Capabilities

… to (6) produce, maintain and increase tactical, strategic and fundamental competitive advantages,

… and to (7) increase productivity, value, enterprise values and incomes.

Each of the practices in The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot is used to change specific situations to increase IR#4 businesspeople’s competitive capabilities to execute The Strategy effectively, strategically and competitively enough to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

“Aji’s” OPNS

Here is a bit more about offers, practices, narratives and strategies and how they are used tactically to execute The Strategy:

1. Fresh, new offers are used to change competitive situations in businesspeople’s favor by producing or changing a Buyer’s interpretations of value, their commitments to the future and the actions they are willing, ready and able to make to fulfill their intentions.

When offers are “highly valued” and “scarce relative to demand”, they change competitive situations by triggering Buyers to:

#1 – Accept them immediately (low cost)

#2 – Increase their willingness to pay a premium (highest possible purchase price)

2. New competitive practices change IR#4 Seller’s and Buyer’s capabilities to fulfill new strategic and competitive intentions as the marketplace unfolds by enabling them to:

Avoid threats

Fulfill obligations to (1) keep opportunities, (2) produce new opportunities and to (3) avoid triggering unnecessary costs, risks and threats

Exploit opportunities

… in competitive situations.

They enable businesspeople and businesses to take care of (1) human, (2) financial, (3) career and (4) business concerns, cope with new competitive situations, increase their capabilities and design new strategies …

… for themselves as well as their networks.

3. New Business Narratives enable IR#4 businesspeople and businesses to speak new ambitions, moods, language, distinctions, interpretations, intentions, commitments, practices and outcomes …

… and shift the thoughts and actions of customers, employers, employees, colleagues and vendors.

4. New strategies, or new action plans, enable IR#4 businesspeople and businesses to produce new outcomes, strategic objectives or OPNS to exploit rapid change to produce high IR#4 Incomes.

As fresh, new, highly valued and scarce offers, practices, narratives and strategies, including new computer-driven devices and applications, are designed, released or learned, IR#4 businesspeople use them immediately to design and execute fresh, new, highly valued and scarce action plans.

They use strategies to change competitive situations, change how businesspeople deal with them, change the methods used to execute a strategy or change the outcomes the strategy produces …

… and produce, maintain and increase tactical, strategic and fundamental competitive advantages.

When businesspeople use The Strategy as a framework, master plan, or fundamental instructions, to design their tactical, strategic and competitive specific intentions first, The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot enables them to design specific tactical pivots, or skills, to fulfill them easily, effectively and fluently.

Why The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot “works”

The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot “works” in IR#4 as a fundamental tactical pivot because offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS) are the fundamental, or always underlying, outcomes businesspeople and businesses use their computers to produce regardless of their concerns, situations, capabilities or strategies, or the device, applications or upgrades they are using.

It “works”, or is effective, because every (1) offer, (2) practice, (3) narrative or (4) strategy is fundamentally the same. Each has its own fundamental organization and structure.

Each has its own fundamental tactical pivot.

Once businesspeople know all four tactical pivots, they can use any computer, any software application and any network of colleagues, customers, employers, employees or vendors to use them to execute The Strategy.

They now possess raw tactical, strategic and competitive capabilities that are completely new in IR#4 and could not be produced in IR#3 without computers, the internet and Networks of Capabilities.

When this happens, they have pivoted towards a new “way of being”, a new orientation or a new way of thinking and acting with new strategic intentions and tactical skills in IR#4’s competitive situations that enables them to roughly double their productivity, value and incomes.

Whether businesspeople are:

1. Producing (designing and executing) their own new offers

2. Diagnosing failures and thwarted intentions

3. Deconstructing a competitor’s offer

4. Anticipating new offers from competitors, vendors, employees, employers or customers

… a fundamental tactical pivot shows them what to notice, observe and assess to design new, effective, strategic and competitive actions very, very quickly.

For example, when businesspeople learn how to design their own new offers, they also learn what to notice, observe and assess about their competitors’ offers.

And, when IR#4 businesspeople begin to develop their specific tactical pivots using The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot, their ability to (1) produce, (2) diagnose, (3) deconstruct and (4) anticipate new offers is as easy, effective and fluent as when they drive their cars to the grocery store.

The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot is used to “make money”

Computers are not single-purpose machines. But they are used as if they are by IR#3 businesspeople who lack IR#4 strategic knowledge … because that is their only option given the IR#3 business knowledge they use.

Computers are multi-purpose, learning, communication, coordination and production tools, as well as the best moneymaking tools ever invented, when businesspeople know how to exploit their strategic and competitive capabilities with The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot to make real money.

The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot is used to “make money” literally and directly with any computer-driven tool, instead of by proxy with processes, procedures and task-oriented work ethics.

First, it enables IR#4 businesspeople to design fresh, new OPNS with colleagues, employers, employees, customers and vendors, to produce transactions, or create opportunities, whenever personal ambitions, business missions, or competitive and financial pressures require them.

Second, The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot provides the practices for businesspeople to execute the OPNS they’ve designed. In the next two sections we work with the criteria and standards for design only.

How to (begin) to design an offer

IR#4 businesspeople can design a new offer very quickly at any time using their computers, the internet and Networks of Capabilities when they have the fundamental knowledge that reveals or discloses how every offer is organized, structured, and operates in the marketplace.

Every new offer, for example, is organized around the same two fundamental promises and five outcomes:

The one made by The Seller to:

#1 – Produce conditions of satisfaction

#2 – Transfer ownership

#3 – Deliver the good or service by a specified time

The one made by The Buyer to:

#4 – Accept delivery

#5 – Pay a purchase price by a specified time

•°• Watch the 25 minute video about How to Begin to Design an Offer on our website at aji.com.

Each part of each promise, such as an offer’s “conditions of satisfaction”, has its own organization and operations IR#4 businesspeople can learn how to design easily. Depending upon their intentions, individuals can use as many as 20 different methods to design an offer. For example, they can focus on costs, risks or returns; competitive situations; value; leadership; Business Narratives; highly valued accomplishments, etc.

When Networks of Capabilities, or business organizations, use their computers, the internet and IR#4 Strategic Knowledge together to design steady streams of fresh, new OPNS to produce competitive advantages, superior value and very high IR#4 Incomes, well, it’s impressive, robust and fast.

The “COS” to Design OPNS in IR#4 with The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot

Businesspeople use The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot to design and execute, or produce, new (1) offers, (2) practices, (3) narratives and (4) strategies, including goods and services, all day. Once they get the hang of it, this is all they do, instead of getting the same job done every day while using their common sense to make incremental improvements that are uncompetitive in IR#4.

Every new offer, practice, narrative and strategy is designed and executed newly in IR#4 to meet these conditions of satisfaction (COS):

1. Be effective, strategic and competitive

2. Be fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand

3. Cope with rapid change, increasing complexity, intense global competition and new technologies

4. Shut down competitors’ opportunities by making competition difficult, costly and risky

5. Produce, maintain or increase fundamental, strategic and tactical competitive advantages

6. Increase competitive capabilities and productivity

7. Fulfill financial, career and business intentions

8. Produce superior value and very high IR#4 Incomes

9. Execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy

Again, in this section we are working with design only.

Can regular businesspeople learn how to design … anything?

To design anything to be effective, strategic and competitive — or to “Aji” an offer, practice, narrative or strategy — is IR#4 Strategic Knowledge.

It is not difficult to learn.

Nevertheless, learning “how to design anything” is often a serious worry for IR#3 businesspeople.

Deep down many businesspeople don’t think they can do it. So even thinking about designing a fresh, new … “anything” … worries them.

Here’s some reassurance, and please remember I’m saying this after teaching about 4,000 businesspeople during the past 30 years who were certain they knew nothing about design to design new offers that produce incomes between $400k and $4m.

Design is natural. We do it every day to fulfill our intentions without knowing there’s a name for it whenever we encounter a new situation.

If you encounter a traffic accident on your way home from the grocery store and are able to invent a new way home, you can design. And I’ll bet you could design it in less than 15 minutes if you know your neighborhood fairly well.

If you are selling and discover your prospect has an unexpected concern, is in a new competitive situation, needs new capabilities or has a new action plan to execute, and you are able to adjust your Sales Conversation to adapt, adopt and use it to close the sale, you are able to design.

Design is a normal practice people use every day to cope with change and breakdowns, or to simply improve the quality of their life. To design … anything, people first come up with new intentions to produce outcomes, such as a new way home from the grocery store when their normal route is blocked. Second, they learn or invent the skills needed to fulfill their intentions, such as learning how to read a map or use the navigator a new way.

To design a new offer, practice, narrative or strategy in as little time as possible, which I’ve proven can be done in as little as 15 minutes with my students, simply requires a different background than IR#3 business knowledge.

Because of your “background knowledge” about your neighborhood, for instance, you can “design” a new way home from the grocery store when your usual way is blocked … but you can’t help my buddy who lives somewhere in the mid-west design a new way to his home.

This is because you have background knowledge about your neighborhood but not his.

When you have the background knowledge to design a new offer, practice, narrative and strategy, doing this becomes as familiar, easy, effective and fluent to work with as designing a new way home when your usual route is blocked. If one way doesn’t work, there are others.

The moment businesspeople learn every offer has the exact same organization and structures and become familiar with its layout and operations the same way we learn about our neighborhood, it doesn’t take them much time to begin designing better offers for their own career or business every day, all day.

Businesspeople begin designing new offers spontaneously right in front of me literally every time I teach them how to do it. Because the practice makes so much intuitive sense, most do it so quickly and naturally they don’t realize this is what they are doing. I find it meaningful and often inspiring, and enjoy being part of it.

IR#4 Strategic Knowledge is that immediately helpful, important, straightforward, sensible, mechanical and simple.

All that is required to “design anything new” is a fundamental background about its organization and structure, and the intentions to use the “anything” to fulfill an objective, which is always to take care of a concern, situation, capability or strategy.

To design anything new requires changing one’s intentions and then changing organizations and structures with tactical skills to fulfill them.

To increase the value of a service, for example, businesspeople must first put together how they can use a new application, or perhaps some thinking from someone in their network,

… to change their intentions to produce a new outcome

… with the 3 promises they make when they offer it

… and the 2 promises they request in return from The Buyer.

Depending upon the new possibilities for thought and action they have learned, or that the new application enables, they could intend to shorten the time needed to deliver the service or find a way to increase profitability by lowering the price at the same time.

How to Design a New Offer, Practice, Narrative or Strategy

An Overview

To design ANY new offer, practice, narrative or strategy businesspeople first create:

1. NEW strategic intentions to produce outcomes that are:

Fresh

New

Highly valued

Scarce relative to demand

2. NEW tactical skills to fulfill their intentions

… using “Aji’s” new strategic knowledge, new devices and applications and their Networks of Capabilities

To Design a New Offer, businesspeople create new intentions to produce outcomes and/or skills to produce outcomes to take care of concerns, cope with situations, increase capabilities and/or design and execute new strategies.

These new intentions and skills appear in the new promises they design, which are the:

Seller’s Promises

1. The “Conditions of Satisfaction” they will produce and provide

2. How they will “Transfer ownership”

3. How they will “Deliver Goods and Services”, or OPNS

Buyer’s Promises

4. How they will “Accept Delivery”

5. How they will “Pay the Purchase Price”

For example:

1. When we reserve a hotel room, we are promised certain “conditions of satisfaction”, such as a freshly made bed and a clean bathroom with fresh towels.

2. We “own” the room with limitations, such as only until noon and smoking is not allowed.

3. The room is “delivered”, or ours, beginning at 3pm.

4. We agree to appear as promised to accept delivery and pay some money in advance for incidentals.

5. We must pay the purchase price before we leave.

To Design a New Practice, businesspeople create a new action, or method, to produce a new outcome in order to take care of a concern, cope with a situation, increase a capability and/or design a new action plan,

… which they can use tactically to change a situation and/or strategically to execute, improve or produce a new action plan.

How is this done?

In IR#4, businesspeople’s tools that they can use to amplify their ability to learn, communicate, coordinate and produce outcomes change throughout the day.

In every case, the value of a new tool is its new capability to amplify people’s abilities to fulfill their intentions.

This implies businesspeople know their strategic, competitive and ultimate intentions, even though they are not obvious or part of IR#3 business knowledge.

“Aji” helps specify them.

As new tools, applications and knowledge are invented, or appear in the marketplace, businesspeople assess how they can best be used to fulfill their intentions to execute The Strategy with specific concerns, situations, capabilities and strategies.

To Design a New Narrative, businesspeople create a new story to fulfill new strategic intentions using new tactical skills. They design a beginning with an Exposition and Conflict, a middle section with Rising Action and an end with a Resolution and Denouement,

… which explains new competitive concerns, situations, capabilities and strategies, commitments, actions and DMRVP

… tactically to change situations or strategically to execute, improve or make a new action plan possible.

For example, to design a new Business Narrative, IR#4 businesspeople first constitute that they are dissatisfied with the way a concern is being taken care of, a situation is being coped with, a capability is being acquired, or a strategy is being executed.

This is called “the unsatisfactory situation”, or The Conflict.

Next, they assess their starting position, which is called The Exposition.

It explains who The Speaker (1) and Champion (2) of the narrative are, that is, who is speaking the narrative and cares that the situation is resolved and who is acting to resolve the unsatisfactory situation.

It also explains:

Who the major and minor actors are (3 & 4)

Who or what is the adversary (5) or causing the problem

The current situation (6)

The unsatisfactory situation (7) or “The Conflict”

The situation that starts the action (8) to resolve The Conflict

The intended satisfactory situation (9) or “The Resolution”

The new space of possibilities for thought and action the satisfactory situation will lead to (10) or “The Denouement”

Next, IR#4 businesspeople specify how they intend to fix or resolve the unsatisfactory situation, which is called The Resolution. The new space of possibilities for thought and action Resolutions always produce is called The Denouement. These are also described in The Exposition.

And, finally, businesspeople explain the action plan they have designed and will execute to fulfill their intentions. This is called The Rising Action of the narrative. It explains how the competitive strategy will work by answering all relevant questions beginning with who, what, where, when, why and how it will work. (See Part #1 for an example of a Business Narrative.)

To Design a New Strategy, businesspeople create a new story about how they will produce a new strategic objective …

… that is fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand

… using new tactics or skills made possible by their computers, applications, the internet or Networks of Capabilities

… to produce a new sequence of interim situations whose value — importance, utility and worth — is superior to competitors’.

Producing offers, practices, narratives and strategies that are effective, strategic and competitive includes producing “marginal utilities” …

… that are fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand

The Strategy’s Tactical Pivot includes new tactical intentions to affect competitive situations or produce assessments of value and global identities that did not exist in IR#3.

Businesspeople focused on getting the job done with their common sense can’t think how to design new offers to make money with new, highly valued and scarce marginal utilities, how to build their identities or how to hold highly compensated leadership roles.

Learning new tactical intentions that computers and the internet make possible for the first time in history, and that are not common sense, or IR#3 business knowledge, is part of pivoting towards IR#4 Strategic Knowledge.

Every offer, practice, narrative and strategy that IR#4 businesspeople and businesses design in IR#4 needs to follow these fundamental design criteria to produce assessments of superior value — or superior importance, utility and worth — or these new IR#4 tactical intentions:

What makes any new offer, practice, narrative or strategy (1) fresh, (2) new, (3) highly valued and (4) scarce relative to demand is its marginal utility(s).

A “marginal utility” is that part of any new OPNS that makes its utility, or help, different from all other similar OPNS being made at the time.

If the current fee standard for actively managed financial assets is 3% and for passively invested assets is 0.1%, and the returns are about the same, then passively invested assets have a 2.9% marginal utility for their fee structure.

If the current standards for delivering some good or service is 5 business days, an offer to deliver in 2 days has a marginal utility of 3 days.

If the current norm to design a new competitive marketing strategy is two business weeks (10 days) and an employee is able to set up a computer and coordinate with a network to produce one in 3 hours, that employee’s productivity has a marginal utility of more than 9 days.

Any of these “marginal utilities” can be a powerful tactical competitive advantage that can be used to produce strategic and fundamental competitive advantages, such as highly valued accomplishments to build identities and speed to market to shut out competitors.

Using the word “marginal” often causes businesspeople to think that the differences are minor, small or insignificant, which is not the case in this context.

Marginal means “situated near the edge”.

In this context it means that whatever is new and different about the offer, such as an increase in speed or quality, or a lower purchase price, adds something to its utility and distinguishes it from all other normal, ordinary or typical OPNS available at the time.

4 Categories of New Designs, Marginal Utilities or Innovations

“Aji” distinguishes four different categories of “marginal utilities” or innovations that IR#4 businesspeople use when learning how to design. Each one triggers customers and competitors to think and act in different ways that can be anticipated strategically and competitively.

Here are brief distinctions of each one:

Computers, the internet and Networks of Capabilities make the design and execution of fresh, new marginal utilities for individual businesspeople, small businesses and business organizations inside large businesses possible, and even easy, for the first time in history. “Aji” — The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy and IR#4 Strategic Knowledge — is all that is required.