Resources

A fundamental source of confusion among executives is the use of a single term to refer to three very different strategic responses to business challenges. We discuss how change can involve magnitude, activity or direction, and how executives can assess what form of change is appropriate in their context.

Consumers have adapted their shopping routines due to COVID with more than 50% reporting they had made purchases from “brands that were new to them” and that these new brands accounted for more than 30% of their purchases. We use the SAVE framework to show how brands can adapt to the changes to consumer behavior and attitudes in order to innovate how new value can be created and delivered.

Gillette’s campaign “The Best Men Can Be” prioritizes social approval over customer demand – and that’s a strategic mistake. Your organization’s license to operate relies on achieving buy in from a broad range of stakeholders, but your success as a business ultimately depends on engaging with customers in a way that motivates them to buy.

Nike delivers a masterclass on how to differentiate between the needs of their brand versus the reputation of their business. Most companies want “to have their cake and eat it, too” by not recognizing that achieving a distinctive brand positioning among consumers sometimes comes at the expense of popularity and approval in the eyes of a wider set of stakeholders.

Since when did a “solution” refer to the bundle you want to sell, rather than to the resolution of a specific customer need? We explore the five key areas in which companies need to make progress if they are serious about focusing on the outcomes that their buyers wants to achieve.

Three key factors determine the potential for an idea’s success – desirability (will it be valued?), feasibility (can it be done?), and sustainability (should it be done?).

Tomas (not his real name) works in Chile as a regional vice president for a European company with operations throughout the globe. How can he convince the global headquarters in Germany of the value of a modified product for the Latin America market?  Executives had repeatedly dismissed his assertions of the opportunity that could be unlocked through adapting an existing, German product to meet local requirements?

Too many companies in mature markets assume that the only reason to enter emerging countries is to pursue new customers. They fail to perceive the potential for innovation in those countries or to notice that a few visionary multinationals are successfully tapping that potential for much-needed ideas in products and services.

It’s a well-documented fact that merged companies underperform the market, typically by 5 to 10% over the three years following the merger. There’s an infrequent but important exception, though – corporations that adopt a “fusion” of the merging companies’ identities actually outperform the market.