Core idea of priceless business articles

Summaries

Just in time strategy - Lowell L. Bryan

A new approach for companies to deal with the rapidly changing external environment is to view corporate strategy as a “portfolio of initiatives”. First, the company should search for new opportunities based on familiarity and then take initiatives to gain more familiarity of the value proposition of each initiative. Second, the company can use simple graphical matrix to manage many initiatives simultaneously. Third, the management should rigorously monitor the initiatives and are willing to make midcourse changes. The result of a successful “portfolio-of-initiatives” strategy is the creation of initiatives that offer higher returns than the risks taken.

Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure  - Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall

Market segmentation, a marketing practice, is flawed because it focuses on the “consumer” rather than to focus on what jobs consumer want to get done. A better approach is to develop purpose brands: products or services consumers can use to perform the required jobs. Companies should affiliate their product to a specific job through advertising, thus guiding consumers to the right product and also helping the company employees to focus and develop improved products.

Constructing the first customer reference to support

the growth of a start-up software technology company - Jari Ruokolainen

First customer references are required for business development, especially for new businesses and startups. Customer references help to build credibility and reliability of new businesses. Although focusing on customer references is important for startups, but often startups over emphasize on technological problems. Startups should take advantage of social contacts and other channels to acquire new business through customer references.

Management learning not management control

the true role of performance measurement – Neely, Al Najjar

In most organizations it is believed that the only purpose of performance measurement data is to help managers to control and track progress. In reality performance measurement data has much more value. Organizations do not pool all performance data from its different departments to perform an integrated performance analysis rather it is analyzed independently. By integrated performance analysis organizations can identify unexpected links between different dimensions of performance and gain insight, enabling companies to extract more value from the data already available to them.

Get inside the lives of your customers - Patricia B. Seybold

Companies collect immense data and analyze their customers but usually they miss to see the big picture in the details. Companies should look carefully at the broad context to figure out why customer select, buy and use their product or service. The author calls this broad context, in which a customer does business, the customer scenario. To create multiple customer scenarios companies have to think beyond their own objectives and have to look at things from the customers’ perspective. Assumptions should be tested with real people to refine and improve understanding of customer needs. This way companies can find new creative ways to improve their products and services.