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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How the U.S. beat Japan ...

17 Aug 2012

The source of Japan’s failure to move forward is mostly about the failure of their Theory Z management style and an unwillingness to change. Back in the eighties, I did a lot of strategic work in how to turn th ... See more

Strategy versus Grand S ...

It is a general rule that a strategy will fail against the competitor who can master a grand strategy. The reason is that a strategy is composed of one vector where its single focal point is more fragile when e ... See more

Narratives – not earnin ...

It is a strategic error to focus too closely on the more predictable control of quarterly earnings results, while providing a stale narrative for where future earnings growth will come from. Earnings are just t ... See more

It’s all about good man ...

During the late eighties execs had to sit through lectures about the superiority of Japanese management. After sitting through one, Jim Morgan, of Applied Materials replied ... ... See more

Look like a duck: How I ...

Look like a duck: cool and collected on the surface, while paddling hard underneath. But never stop paddling, or you will be a sitting duck. ... See more

Tunneling through a com ...

Tunneling through a competitor’s pricing walls is a very effective strategy. AMD successfully used this to gain share in the microprocessor market. It starts with carefully examining the existing market struc ... See more

The two reasons to adve ...

The two reasons to advertise: Brand Building and Lead Generation ... See more

The stock will take car ...

15 Jun 1988

This is something our industry’s marketing legend, Bob Graham, used to say whenever his people got worried about their company’s stock taking a dive. I was reminded of it when I heard Jack Dempsey, Twitter’s CE ... See more

Branding word choice wi ...

Words matter. Words imprint in the brain with the images they create. It is a general observation the best brands are built around words descriptive of the products, markets, or the companies they are destined ... See more

Operations, account man ...