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Ralph Welborn

Boston, United States

12% of companies capture 85% of economic profit, in every industry.

Which means that the majority of companies wrestle over a minimal amount of economic profit - and growth.

And the odds of becoming one of those 12% of explosive growth companies is, on average, only 8%.

The question therefore becomes, how do you change those odds to become of the explosive growth companies?

The short answer is: learn and extend the lessons of the business model underlying such explosive growth companies. Which is where business ecosystems come in - not as the "hot buzzword" many consider it as, but as pragmatic methods of orchestrating capabilities around new source of value.

This is what I've been doing for years - whether as CEO of CapImpact, a Partner at ClearPrism or Head of Strategy & Transformation for IBM in the Middle East & Africa -

namely, helping bold leaders identify & extend the 4 lessons of explosive growth companies to change the odds for high impact and 'close the execution gap' between strategic intent and execution.

I have a new book on this topic, called Topple: the end of firm-based strategy & the rise of explosive new growth models (May 2018... on Amazon).

Read it... contact me... and let's figure this out together.

ralph@capimpact.com

Available For: Authoring, Consulting, Influencing, Speaking
Travels From: Boston, Ma

Ralph Welborn Points
Academic 0
Author 194
Influencer 11
Speaker 0
Entrepreneur 0
Total 205

Points based upon Thinkers360 patent-pending algorithm.

Thought Leader Profile

Portfolio Mix

Company Information

Areas of Expertise

AI
Big Data
Customer Experience 30.03
Digital Disruption 33.29
Digital Transformation 31.78
Emerging Technology 32.99
Innovation 37.66
Management
Startups
Blockchain 30.15
Ecosystems 30.12

Industry Experience

Financial Services & Banking
High Tech & Electronics
Oil & Gas
Pharmaceuticals
Professional Services

Publications

14 Article/Blogs
An amazing customer service anecdote - thanks Amtrak
LinkedIn
July 18, 2018
I was on the train platform having just purchased my ticket, train #2163 from Westwood station to New York City. The train was 150 yards from pulling into the station. And I had a sudden sensation that something wasn’t right. I wasn’t sure what. The train was pulling in.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation

The paradox of digitization: Two gaps to close
KivoDaily.com
July 02, 2018
Here's a paradox. Digitization is supposed to be an equal opportunity program to unlock productivity gains for everyone. And it may be that. But not everyone is realizing the benefits of those opportunities.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Digital Disruption, Innovation

Topple: insight into new models for explosive growth
LinkedIn
June 11, 2018
Fewer than 15% of firms realize approximately 85% of economic profit in just about every industry. Much talk is made of the usual culprits here: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation

How Your Business Ecosystem Can Power Explosive New Growth
www.youngupstarts.com
June 05, 2018
The past 40 years of corporate strategy have focused primarily on building firm-based competitive advantages to maintain or improve growth. But times and technologies change, as do customer expectations, and organizational responses need to reflect these changes. The things that made many organizations successful up to now no longer apply.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Digital Disruption, Ecosystems

4 Ways to Build Your Business Ecosystem (and Why It Matters)
Kivo Daily
June 05, 2018




The Red Queen is a character from Alice in Wonderland. Remember her? She’s the character who runs faster and faster but stays in the same (competitive) place. She’s an apt metaphor for many — or most — organizations who recognize that they have to do something differently because after all, technologies advance, markets shift and customer expectations change. But do what differently? Transform, of course (a fancy word to invest in digital, in innovation, in IoT, in AI or in whatever is the shiny new object of the day). Why? Because everyone else is.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation, Ecosystems

Looking for New Growth in All the Wrong Places
CEO World
May 22, 2018
The Red Queen is a character from Alice in Wonderland. Remember her? She’s the character who runs faster and faster but stays in the same (competitive) place. She’s an apt metaphor for many — or most — organizations who recognize that they have to do something differently because ...

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Digital Disruption, Innovation

Digital Transformation — or stalled execution?
Import from medium.com
November 29, 2017
75% of digital transformation efforts fail. The promise of digital transformation is seductive:Use all the digital technologies at your disposal and capture new sources of value in new ways.Capturing this value is supposed to have profound implications on:· Customers to engage· Assets to transfo

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Tags: Digital Transformation

Where Scale comes From
Import from wordpress feed
October 23, 2017
Scale used to be driven by control of the distribution channel. When this was the case, it made sense to own your own assets to push through these channels. Owning the distribution channel was a critical, competitive barrier to entry: owning a medallion (for taxis), the brand of trust (for hotels),

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation

Where Scale Comes From
LinkedIn
October 22, 2017
Scale used to be driven by control of the distribution channel. When this was the case, it made sense to own your own assets to push through these channels. Owning the distribution channel was a critical, competitive barrier to entry: owning a medallion (for taxis),

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation

Beyond today’s generation of Blockchain – a lesson from the Wright Brothers
LinkedIn
September 21, 2017
Ok, Blockchain continues to be hot. As CBInsights points out, Q1 2017 saw startup investment deals rise for the third consecutive quarter and the number of deals has grown an average of 16% QoQ since early 2016.

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Tags: Blockchain, Digital Transformation, Innovation

Beyond today’s generation of Blockchain – a lesson from the Wright Brothers
Import from wordpress feed
September 21, 2017
Ok, Blockchain continues to be hot. As CBInsights points out, Q1 2017 saw startup investment deals rise for the third consecutive quarter and the number of deals has grown an average of 16% QoQ since early 2016. The reasons for the heat remains the potential disruptive implication of distributed led

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Tags: Blockchain

Musings on (digital) Monopoly and a new way to think about customer centricity
Import from wordpress feed
July 26, 2017
Reflections from EU’s ruling against Google this past week Companies that grow (effectively) are those that capture customers’ attention. Scale and growth used to come from ownership of supply: think telecommunications with its wires, Comcast and its network, automobile companies and their suppl

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Tags: Customer Experience, Telecom

Musings on (digital) Monopoly... and a new way to think about customer centricity
LinkedIn
July 23, 2017
Scale and growth used to come from ownership of supply: think telecommunications with its wires, Comcast and its network, automobile companies and their supply chains, utilities and their infrastructure.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation, Telecom

The Irony of Growth
Import from wordpress feed
July 23, 2017
Growth, for many, is getting tougher. Technologies are changing quickly.  New competitors are entering attacking different parts of the business.  Traditional competitors are building new capabilities.  And, for many, customer expectations – and demands – keep rising. In short, no one is stan

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Tags: Digital Transformation

3 Books
Topple: The End of the Firm-Based Strategy and the Rise of New Models for Explosive Growth
Greenleaf Book Group Press
May 29, 2018
What made businesses successful yesterday is not what will make them effective tomorrow.

The most successful, and explosive growth leaders of today and tomorrow reflect a new competitive reality: the new competitive landscape will be shaped less by firm-specific strategies than by business ecosystems.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Digital Disruption, Innovation

Get It Done!: A Blueprint for Business Execution
Wiley
December 23, 2005
In Get It Done!, top business advisors Ralph Welborn and Vince Kasten cut through the noise and isolate what they call the "DNA for business execution." They show you how to manipulate this DNA to get done what needs to get done-through many real-world examples of great (and sometimes not so great) execution in action.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Innovation

The Jericho Principle: How Companies Use Strategic Collaboration to Find New Sources of Value
Wiley
April 17, 2003
Understanding the opportunities and dangers of innovation through intercompany collaboration
The Jericho Principle identifies key trends and patterns in the increasing use of collaboration by corporations and creates a strategic and operational framework for answering key questions about the why and how of using collaboration to rapidly create innovation in uncertain times.

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Tags: Innovation

2 Media Interviews
TOPPLE with co-author Ralph Welborn PhD
This Week in America
June 26, 2018
Topple: The End of the Firm-Based Strategy and the Rise of New Models for Explosive Growth by Ralph Welborn PhD and Sajan Pillai
What made businesses successful yesterday is not what will make them effective tomorrow.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Digital Disruption, Innovation

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Ralph Welborn, co-author of “Topple?—?The End of the Firm-Based Strategy and Rise of New Models for Explosive Growth”
Medium
June 04, 2018
I had the opportunity to interview Ralph Welborn, co-author with Sajan Pillai of Topple?—?The End of the Firm-Based Strategy and Rise of New Models for Explosive Growth. He shares why companies adhering to old business models are “toppling” from the Fortune 500 list, and what companies can do to capture new opportunities for growth.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Digital Disruption, Innovation

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Ralph Welborn