Leveraging the New Infrastructure

CHAPTER 1

Management Challenges of the New Infrastructure

InvestCo is a large firm with a broad product range. It faces severe competition from smaller, more agile firms offering a limited range of products to select demographic groups. InvestCo sees its future as developing long-term relationships with increasingly sophisticated consumers and providing them with a broad range of products. However, InvestCo has found it difficult to respond quickly and is beginning to lose market share. A major part of the problem lies in the difficulties of developing new products that cross InvestCo’s traditional areas of responsibility and thus its business unit boundaries.

Until now the firm has operated as four largely independent business units whose senior ...