About Kim Korn
The path we take in life shapes the world around us while it shapes us. From the beginning, I have wanted to design and develop of things of value. This led to the nurturing of my sense of design for two years in architecture school at Iowa State University. But my dream of being the next Frank Lloyd Wright faded and I moved on to explore elsewhere.
What I discovered my intrigue for business surprised me. My intrigue soon turned into a life-long passion. Following wise counsel, I pursued a finance degree the field blending ethereal economics with analytic accounting at the University of Iowa. This turned out to be one of many steps towards understanding the design, value, and purpose of businesses and companies. Taking a real liking to finance in particular and business in general, I not only earned an MBA in Finance, but supplemented it with a year's worth of computer science courses, tutored statistics, taught the undergraduate corporate finance course for two years, performed research that became published, and took a bunch of doctorate level finance courses just for fun.
Next I stepped into Arthur Andersen's (now Accenture) three week programming boot camp in St. Charles, Illinois to begin my consulting career designing and delivering information systems. Between my years there and many more at Andersen Corporation (the window maker), my career eventually led to full-fledged business process design, organization development, innovation of current businesses, development of startup businesses, several corporate, business, and departmental strategy formations and strategic initiatives to carry them out, and a plethora of company transformation efforts. During this time I acted as an external consultant, internal consultant, staff manager, line manager, corporate program manager, and executive. This stage of my journey had lots of action, incredible progress, dramatic victories, some painful failures, and abundant learning. But throughout this whole time, an oft ignored notion nagged at me more and more, a proverbial elephant in the room being ignored.
From leading, participating directly in, and watching a host of strategy develop efforts, involving well-intended executives, outside-the-box independent consultants, prestigious academics, and several iconic paragons of the strategy-consulting industry—not once did we develop a corporate or business strategy with an explicitly defined competitive advantage. Ouch! I also noticed this to be true of most other companies as well.
Upon leaving the corporate world, the nagging question took over my life. I pledged I would find the answer to creating, and perpetually recreating, competitive advantage. After all, this is the essential task of management, and if management does not do this as its first priority, what legitimacy does it have? Management needs to create value first, avoid destroying value second, and administer companies third. It seems most management, both the business leaders and ways of management, have this exactly backwards.
Upon launching my personal transformation to thought leader and management guru many years ago, I took on the appellation "business architect" to signify my passion and mission to design better businesses, organizations, and companies. This led directly to "business architecture" as the name for my company. This "architecture" identity served me well for many years, but with the development of my practice over the years I found "architecture" to be a bit opaque. It neither unambiguously conveyed nor captured the imagination of what I offer companies and organizations of all types.
Essentially, I practice to help organizations develop their unique persistent competitive advantage in order that they may thrive indefinitely. Therefore, in July, 2011, Business Architecture, Inc. became Create Advantage, Inc. and my personal appellation became that of Management Advisor. For this development, both in identity and the substance underlying it, I thank my many compatriots who along the way helped to bring this about.
After many years (seems like far too many at the moment) of intensive study, research, and formulation, with assistance and support from others, especially Joe Pine's unflagging support, I have discovered a way of management built from the ground up that, at its core, regenerates companies to achieve persistent advantage. As it turns out, strategic success and competitive advantage is not due to a plan or planning expertise, but the capability within a company to perpetually discover and develop new ways of creating and capturing value. Any particular advantage is contextual, unique to a particular business and time. Getting strategy right, therefore, is not about a plan, or an initiative, but getting the architecture of your business enterprise right—your company's internal form, fit, function, and aesthetics—and in getting it right you create one of society's essential value creating entities with the capability to thrive indefinitely.
I hope you have as much enjoyment exploring and sharing on this blog as I have had in pursuing the answers to what management, strategy, and companies ought to be.
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Email me at kim(at)CreateAdvantage.com
Call me at +1 (651) 402-3900
