I was recently asked by a reporter whether there are times when a company is too generous to its customers. The company in question was JetBlue, and the issue was whether perhaps it was being… Read more »
Thought Sparks
Stop expecting applause for just doing your job!
It happened again this morning – after taking my car to get some necessary maintenance, I received a breathlessly enthusiastic email asking whether I had any reason not to be thrillingly ecstatic with the service… Read more »
Whither golf? The iconic old boy’s game facing erosion?
If you spend any amount of time at corporate retreats, offsites and workshops, as I do, golf is ubiquitous. Bonding takes place on the course, the post-game conviviality is shared, and team-building exercises pairing golfers… Read more »
Don’t listen to what your customers say, watch how they behave
I am often asked by companies with whom I work whether focus groups, surveys or customer panels are useful in learning what customers want and more importantly, what they will pay for. Sure, these techniques… Read more »
Colleague Jerry Kim on why Apple may be moving from products to platforms
In my Columbia Business School Executive Education course, Leading Strategic Growth and Change, Jerry Kim shares his research on platform versus product strategies and the pluses and minuses of the two. Rather counterintuitively, he proposed… Read more »
When what’s needed is a mindset change
I was chatting the other day with a good client who are located way too far away (but that’s another story). We talked generally about how his company was doing (very well) and what he… Read more »
What trends fuel the disruption list for 2014?
It was really fun to be part of CNBC’s advisory panel to choose the most disruptive 50 companies of the year. The full list for 2014 can be found at this link. Some of the… Read more »
How do we get our middle managers back into a growth mindset?
It’s been five or more years since the Great recession walloped economies all over the world, with the result that for many companies it has been a time of doing not very much but cost-cutting,… Read more »
End of Competitive Advantage Goes Global & Input please!
The English-speaking version of The End of Competitive Advantage has been doing very well, even reaching the business best-seller list! We’re now on to versions in other languages. So far the Portuguese, Turkish and Russian… Read more »
Portuguese edition of End of Competitive Advantage now available
Just in time for the World Cup in Brazil, I’m delighted to be able to say that the Portuguese-language edition of The End of Competitive Advantage is now available for purchase. You can get to… Read more »
Breakfast session June 4th with WOBI on Innovation
I’m very much looking forward to a breakfast session next week that I’ll be running as part of a partnership between Columbia Business School and WOBI in New York. We’ll be talking about how you can… Read more »
Sustainable advantage, Transient Advantage and Organizational Change
In an insightful blog that is part of a series HBR is running on the intersection between Strategy and Innovation, editor Sarah Cliffe interviews colleague Don Sull, who argues that you can think of the… Read more »