Blog posts
The Art of Flows
Writing is a powerful and well-tested marketing tool. The use of extended written materials is a key part of much technical marketing: white papers, brochures, documentation, and more. Creating a whole book to tell the story of a product or capability is less common, but no less valuable.
Over the past several months I’ve been co-authoring a book with ...
More >Differentiation is the key to selling in a tough economy
Great products always have a market. The question is this: What’s the value proposition that makes sense in difficult times? If your product is all about quality, you have two advantages over lesser products:
1. Your product can enhance your customer’s brand
2. You can offer risk-reduction purchasing strategies to your customers.
Both of these differentiators depend on ...
More >Customer relationship innovation
There are many ways to innovate, but one of the most reliable is in the customer relationship. It’s reliable because you can quickly measure the impact of changes in the way you manage the relationship with your customers. You don’t even have to have a brilliant idea—your customers will often provide it for you (if you ask ...
More >Innovation is not optional
Most people would agree that innovation is important. But not every company takes it seriously. Innovation is what keeps your business relevant as the needs of your customer change, and as your competition evolves.
It’s tempting to believe that in a cost-driven, mature market, efficiency is the key – that close management of costs and efficient and predictable processes are ...
More >Strategy: Making your recommendation
Once your strategy hypothesis has been presented and validated, it’s time to get on to implementation. But implementation in any organization requires buy-in and understanding from a lot of people.
The recommendation phase is the process of establishing common understanding and buy-in, so that implementation can proceed.
The good news is that you have gone through a thorough process ...
More >Research planning drives new insights
Having defined your strategy problem and completed an environmental scan, you’re ready to plan the research. One of the key outputs from the environmental scan was a set of questions. It’s worth documenting the unanswered questions carefully, because they are the primary input to your research plan.
Questions represent gaps in your knowledge that you’d like to ...
More >How business model innovation drives business success
Business models are the way you offer your products or services to the market. They include elements like pricing and packaging, terms and conditions, and added-value elements that increase differentiation.
In most markets, having the right products is not enough. Selling books against Amazon is really tough. Selling consumer electronics against Best Buy is too hard for most of us ...
More >Strategy: the Environmental Scan gets you oriented
Strategy is about making good decisions. The best decisions are made on the basis of a combination of experience, intuition, and fact-based analysis.
The first step is to get oriented.
The environmental scan is a process I’ve found of great value in a complex strategy project. It follows the problem definition phase. The purpose is to gather and organize ...
More >Strategy: defining the problem
In Seven Steps to a sound strategy, I outlined the elements of an effective strategy process. The first step is defining the problem.
It’s not as easy as it may seem, because early in strategy development there’s a lot that isn’t known. Here are some tests for a good problem definition:
- If you solve it, will it ...
Seven steps to a sound strategy
Strategy is about making informed choices with limited resources, in ways that strengthen your business. There’s no easy way to be sure that you have the right strategy, but there is a process that yields consistent results. In this post I’ll summarize a proven process for strategy development. Then I’ll describe each step in turn.
The seven ...
More >Sales and Marketing MindXchange
I just returned from three interesting days in Tempe, Arizona, at the Frost and Sullivan Sales and Marketing MindXchange. This is a highly interactive event – workshops, facilitated discussions, and a lot of networking.
I was somewhat skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a good thing for several reasons:
- The quality of the participants was high. From many ...
Articles
Pragmatic steps to strategy development
Strategy is about making informed choices with limited resources, in ways that strengthen your business. There’s no easy way to be sure that you have the right strategy, but there is a process that yields consistent results. In this post I’ll summarize a proven process for strategy development. Then I’ll describe each step in turn.
The seven ...
More >Brand Magic
I have never been branded in the physical sense; however millions of farm animals over the centuries would attest to its effectiveness. The original of the word “brand” is in old Norse—the language of ancient Scandinavia. It means “to burn.” It was a good idea in Scandinavia to burn an identifying mark into the rump of your livestock, because ...
More >Services
Vision and Values
Behind all the technology and product and business activity in a company is a group of people. Increasingly, that group is diverse in culture, language and experience. It has never been more important to clearly define the basic beliefs and intentions of the company in a way that the team can understand. This is the purpose of establishing values within ...
More >Business Strategy
Strategy is really just another word for intelligent planning of your business in order to maximize value creation and delivery. It can involve re-vitalization of brand; new product plans; expansion into new geographies; and much more.
There are some basic issues that turn up time and again.
- Core competencies – What is my company really good at?
- Sustained advantage – What must ...
Links
- Indeed - Career Site http://www.indeed.com/ - A really easy-to-use site with a wide range of jobs and great search and filtering tools.
- Harvard Business Review: Working Knowledge http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ - The Harvard Business Review publishes a lot of very well-thought out materials. Some of it is available in blog-like forms from the Working Knowledge site. There are articles on marketing, strategy, and a wide range of business topics.
- Interlink Partners http://www.interlink-partners.com/ - Interlink Partners is a boutique consultancy with a track record of results in semiconductors and software. Their focus is on a high-intensity examination of business issues and opportunities resulting in rapid results. The partners bring deep experience in marketing, operations, venture funding, and international business.
- The Art of Flows http://www.lulu.com/product/item/the-art-of-flows/11052063 - A practical guide to the creation, maintenance and deployment of design flows for the software and electronics industries, written in collaboration with the creator of the software.
