Competition never sleeps

Summary : It is a basic principle of tactical awareness that the competition never sleeps. You must assume that they are always trying to find areas of competitive advantage and working to reverse any areas of competitive disadvantage. During the eighties, the ascent of Japan's semiconductor equipment industry was accompanied by high customer satisfaction with their tools and general dissatisfaction with tools made by western suppliers...

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The 5 Business Strategi ...

There are only five business strategies: cost, quality, distribution, technology, and intellectual property (IP). All business strategies break down into these five, or some combination of them. As a general p ... See more

Winners take ownership ...

No one ever fixed a problem that wasn’t theirs. Problems are opportunities, so blaming others leaves the opportunities for others. ... See more

Segment products and ma ...

One of the greatest problems in marketing is effectively communicating the differences between products so that they are clear in the customer’s minds. Pricing provides one of the most effective ways to do thi ... See more

Define and refine your ...

This seems obvious. It’s so obvious that it is a strategic error that many companies make. First, they over define what are their core strengths. Defining a core strength is simple: any core strength must diffe ... See more

Confuse the customer wi ...

Never believe that naming is trivial. It’s the first thing people must remember before they decide to buy. That alone makes it one of the most important things an executive must do. For if they can’t remembe ... See more

Tech businesses need Pr ...

If you approach product development as a task of managing you invariably introduce products that were in demand last year. It is a basic error to have product managers in technology businesses. Product managers ... See more

To be truly innovative, ...

While counterintuitive, the reason why big innovations are truly big is that they invariably have something stupid about them that keep less innovative people from attempting to innovate. It’s far easier and le ... See more

There should be two dis ...

One is corporate marketing, which is for the development of sales-support materials, advertising, marcom, as well as corporate positioning. Then there is market development, for which the responsibilities of d ... See more

Customers are not visio ...

It is a common mistake to attempt entrepreneurial market development using classic business school practices of surveying customers, sizing the market, planning development costs, and figuring out the ROI. It i ... See more

Strategy starts at the ...

Strategy starts at the top and then should be layered with tactics down through your organization ... See more