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There’s a Better Way to “Refresh Your Brand” We know from study after study that the key to successful growth is having a clear understanding of customers’ unmet needs. It’s very hard to innovate, differentiate, and grow if you don’t know where your target customers’ needs remain unmet by your own offerings and your competitors’ …
Forget About Trying to Create Customer Needs Many people believe that the most innovative companies create customer needs with breakthrough new products. Nobody knew they needed an iPhone, the thinking goes, until Apple created the need for it. Hence, if you want to be an innovation leader, you should find ways to create customer needs. …
Increase Your ROI on R&D In a recent McKinsey survey, 84 percent of global executives reported that innovation is important to growth strategy. Yet only 6 percent are satisfied with their innovation performance. That’s a staggering 94 percent dissatisfied rate — worse than Congress! Perhaps even more disheartening is the finding that very few of …
Why ‘Failing Faster’ is Often Folly “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.” — Thomas Edison This famous quote is often used to encourage rapid prototyping or launching minimum viable products (MVPs) as they are called in lean startup parlance. But to hold up Edison as an exemplar of this …
The One Thing You Must Do to Remain Flexible in Disruptive Times There’s an internal IBM PowerPoint slide making its way around the internet that declares, “The Digital Disruption Has Already Happened.” It cites the following evidence: World’s largest taxi company owns no taxis (Uber) Largest accommodation provider owns no real estate (Airbnb) Largest phone …
4 Steps to Launch an Offering (or a Presidential Candidate Like Trump) Presidential candidates are “new offerings” presented to the American public every election cycle. Here are four steps that I take with clients to help them determine what their customers really want, along with some thoughts about how this approach applies to presidential candidates …
How to Acquire More Clients (and Maintain Your Integrity) We’ve all been manipulated into buying something we didn’t need. This type of selling behavior is particularly egregious for professional service providers because it is the antithesis of being a trusted advisor. Not surprisingly, a high percentage of professional service providers — attorneys, accountants, architects, consultants …
How One Business is Disrupting Its Market I don’t write food or restaurant reviews, but I admire any organization that changes the game and distinguishes itself in a crowded field. One such organization is the fast casual restaurant Hot Chicken Takeover (HCT) in Columbus, Ohio. It’s disrupting the fast casual restaurant market by competing on …
Dinosaur or Dynamo? How to Stay Relevant in a Rapidly Changing World Hasn’t the internet rendered public libraries nearly obsolete? That was the question in my mind as I watched Patrick Losinski, CEO of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, receive his “CEO of the Year Award” from Columbus CEO Magazine. I was wrong, at least about …
A Short Meditation on Customer Needs (Modeled after “If-by-whiskey,” the famous 1952 speech by Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr.) On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me where I stand concerning the commonly held belief that …
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