Company follow different strategies in their quest for competitive advantage. For example, some companies compete on price. Other companies try to differentiate themselves from competitors through their capabilities. Still others draw their competitive advantage from their flexibility and innovation. At the operations level, the strategic direction chosen by the company leads to a set of […]
Read More… from Meeting Sustainability Priorities in Competitive Operational Strategies
Products and services fit into certain categories. For example, circuses, theatres and sporting events are all sources of live entertainment, yet they each fit their own category. Categories are defined by the attributes that customers expect from those categories. The circus category involves a traveling show with animals and clowns; the attributes of the theatre […]
Read More… from The Competitive Implications of Customer Expectation
The word ‘scenarios’ has many different meanings in a variety of fields and disciplines. In strategic planning, scenarios refer to a small set of carefully structured and tailored narratives about the future context a company or an industry might inhabit. These narratives are developed through interviews and workshops with a broad range of stakeholders related to the focal […]
Read More… from The Power of Scenarios to Open New Perspectives
Michael Porter gave us a process for strategy development. It was a very cognitive process (i.e., using conscious mental activities such as thinking, understanding, learning, remembering) that followed prescribed steps: gather the right data, avoid biases, and choose activities that differentiate the firm from competitors. There is one problem with the cognitive development of strategy: […]
Read More… from Why the Best Strategic Thinkers Are Both Rational and Emotional
There are a variety of product-related services that manufacturers offer their customers. New research pinpoints the following different categories of services: Complementary services help customers feel more comfortable buying the product because they either smooth the sale and use of the product or they adapt the product’s functionality. Complementary smoothing services — such as financing, […]
Read More… from Adapt Your Choice of Product-Related Services to the Industry Life Cycle
A website today is indispensable for any retail operation, no matter how small. The Internet is an integral part of the shopping experience. Not every online retail experience is the same. Grocery stores might offer coupons, office supplies stores might offer coupons and the opportunity to purchase products, and sites such as BarnesandNoble.com are full-service […]
Read More… from The Unexpected Impact of Click and Collect Retail Programs
Many organizations must deal with multiple ‘logics’ that come with different and often conflicting or competing rules of the game. For example, organizations in the medical field must balance the logics of science and care. Companies in the micro-finance industry balance commercial and development logics: they are bankers who are also involved in advancing developing […]
Read More… from The Role of Identity When an Organization’s Purpose Changes
Research has shown that downsizing will often have a direct negative impact on customer satisfaction, and this negative impact results in a decline in business performance. This causal chain seems clear and intuitive. New research confirms the assumption that downsizing hurts customer satisfaction, and as a result, reduces the financial performance of the company. However, […]
Read More… from When Does Downsizing Hurt Customer Satisfaction?
Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC), a company that specialized in the large-scale cranes used to load containers onto ships, burst on the heavy machinery landscape in 1992. At that time, the global market for large-scale container cranes was growing fast as ports were having to handle more and more super-sized container vessels. The industry was […]
Read More… from A Lesson from China: Growth Is Not Eternal So Be Prepared
The amount of data we generate today boggles the mind. As much as 90% of all data in the world today was created in the past 2 years, writes Keith Carter, adjunct associate professor in the Department of Decision Sciences at National University Singapore Business School and author of the book "Actionable Intelligence: A Guide to […]
Read More… from Harness Big Data Using Visualisation Software Tools
