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Informal Learning Flow is a content hub started by Jay Cross that collects and organizes the best information on the web around informal learning. We hope this will help you find good stuff, learn and stay current. |
121 Articles match "competitive advantage","customers"
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The Latest from Informal Learning Flow
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When Profit and Social Impact Unite
This form of hybrid business model will lead the way toward a new economy — and the companies that figure it out won't just thrive; they will develop huge competitive advantages.
These hybrid value chains present myriad challenges for businesses, including figuring out how to serve consumers they traditionally haven't served and redefining value for existing customers. (Think Until the late 1980s, you could clearly see the difference between the business and public sectors. Business was fast-moving, productive, and focused exclusively on profits.
HarvardBusiness.org
- Thursday, March 18, 2010
If the Customer Is Truly King, Then Sonoma Partners Is One Smitten Queen
The firm works exclusively with Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management software, thus they were in a prime position to goose their bottom line during a downturn. First they identified an opportunity in the soft belly of the bear--in this case, Sonoma Partners realized that companies needed a competitive advantage more than ever and a good place to start is by solidifying bonds with customers. Any time a head of a company uses the word "upswing" in detailing his business' recent success, there is a bit of a compulsion around these parts to comment on the company.
Fast Company
- Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Putting Marketing on "ROIDs" Part 2: Responsibility Marketing
I couldn't help thinking that marketers should take that to heart in a world where corporate responsibility will increasingly be a critical factor in competitive advantage.
In a previous post I sketched the marketing "performance enhancers" that CEOs and CMOs say they need for the customer-centric future, summed up in the mnemonic "'ROIDS" (Responsibility marketing, Organizational leadership, Insights about customers, and Digital marketing). After having nearly destroyed one of the world's most recognizable and successful brands, Tiger Woods got one thing right in his extraordinary mea culpa: "My real apology," he said, "will come from my behavior over time."
HarvardBusiness.org
- Tuesday, March 9, 2010
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Find the 15-Minute Competitive Advantage
Call this the "15 minute competitive advantage": changing in short fast bursts rather than waiting for the breakthrough that transforms everything. Stay a little ahead of the competition while close enough to what customers can understand and incorporate, and the innovation idea is easier to sell. Customers can see it in action first and incorporate it on a small scale before committing to replace everything. Just because this is a time of transformation doesn't mean that it's easy to sell transformational ideas. Economic uncertainty has reduced the audience
HarvardBusiness.org
- Monday, November 9, 2009
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Competitive Advantage Is Fleeting (And It's Okay to Admit It)
For as long as I've been working in the field of strategy, a taken-for granted assumption among executives, students and academics has been that the goal of a great strategy is achieving a "sustainable competitive advantage."
In hyper-competitive environments, to paraphrase Hobbes , the life of a competitive advantage is nasty, brutish and short . As the field migrated from a subject called "Business Policy," having to do mostly with the job of the general manager, to the current conception of "Strategic Management," we picked up a vast number of tools, frameworks and analytical approaches that promised to make the world of strategy one of greater rigor, science and analytical depth.
HarvardBusiness.org
- Monday, June 8, 2009
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Six Ways to Build Your Brand Through Customer Service
When it comes to brand building, customer service is often the last and most-ignored piece of the puzzle. Aligning customer service and your brand is an essential but under-used way to attract and retain customers, differentiate the business, and boost brand loyalty. Done right, it can create a truly sustainable competitive advantage. This is a big mistake--and big missed opportunity. Here are six ways we've seen to use customer service to reinforce brand identity.
HarvardBusiness.org
- Monday, April 6, 2009
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Selling Simplicity — Not Just Marketing It
What is interesting about this phenomenon is that it is in sharp contrast with the thinking of the past few years — which was that consumers wanted unlimited choice so that they could customize their products and services to fit their own unique needs and lifestyles. As such, technology companies pushed for more and more bells and whistles, while other firms drove towards mass customization. Have you noticed that more and more companies are marketing "simplicity" as a reason to buy their products or services? For example, Philips Electronics advertises " Sense and simplicity
HarvardBusiness.org
- Thursday, October 29, 2009
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Winning in an Age of Radical Transparency
Hirshberg foresees a day when progressive companies will find a marked competitive advantage in publishing LCAs of their own products, verified by third parties. That courageous step, says Hirshberg, would be a strong signal to customers of brand integrity.
Twitter is a natural for a single customer to alert a circle of friends about the ups or downs of a brand. The more transparent a market, economic theory holds, the healthier it will be. Information asymmetry — where sellers know crucial information that buyers cannot access — pollutes the market.
HarvardBusiness.org
- Thursday, May 7, 2009
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How Not to Compete, Post-Crash
Secrecy used to be a competitive advantage in many businesses. It meant freedom; you could reduce your costs and increase your revenue without customers knowing how you did it. While it might be a good thing when the details of your business are a secret to your customers, it's a very bad thing when the details of your business are a secret to you .
I recently met someone who used to be a bond trader but took a few years off to raise her children. Now she wants to return to work.
HarvardBusiness.org
- Monday, April 13, 2009
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Best Buy: The Canary in the Consumer Electronics Coal Mine?
An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this Monday raised a provocative question: are we entering a new era where consumer electronics retailers will wrest competitive advantage from consumer electronics manufacturers?
The success of Best Buy's program could be an early sign that the era of feature- and function-based competition is waning in some categories, opening the door to customization- and cost-based competition.
Over the past couple of decades, the balance of power has been squarely in the hands of the manufacturers. Companies like
HarvardBusiness.org
- Wednesday, April 29, 2009
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Big Company Lessons for Small Businesses
We all must understand our customers and the markets we serve, put the right people in the right places, and be sure the organization is aligned to deliver on our goals and objectives.
Small businesses have important competitive advantages. They know their business and customers better than anyone else, and this knowledge can be hugely leveraged with the right operational practices. Dick Harrington was most recently the CEO and President of the world's largest information media company Thomson Reuters and is largely recognized for his transformation of the company from a diversified holding company to the information services juggernaut it is today.
HarvardBusiness.org
- Thursday, February 26, 2009
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Why Ideals are the New Business Models
It's the worst downturn for the better part of a century: business model redesign - lower costs, greater efficiency, choosing the most profitable customers and revenue streams - should be every boardroom's first priority, right?
When we seek to monetize, we end up chasing the same old lame competitive advantage. Take your pick: newspapers , autos , mobile , solar - across the zombieconomy, boardrooms are sweaty-browed with the task of business model redesign. Nothing could be more wrong.
HarvardBusiness.org
- Friday, March 13, 2009
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Product Development 2.0
Specifically, I'm talking about building highly competitive online products by turning over non-essential control to users directly via the Web. The reasoning behind doing this is simple: Satisfied customers have always been essential to having the most successful business, both online and offline. But how best can you ensure that they get exactly what they want from you, as customized and quickly as possible? While the window on using the "2.0" quot; suffix is probably closing, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore an especially significant trend in
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