innovation is not everything: Hap Klopp building invincible brands: Ambi Parameswaran customers as a moat: Morgen Witzel beyond the blame game: Rajesh Maurya.
innovation is not everything
Companies often engage in quick fixes in a bid to be seen as innovative. While this may bring in short-term value, failing to focus on the long term could erode their most valuable moat—the brand. Hap Klopp explains why a brand’s story is not just about its logo or taglines. It is the combined accumulated impact of every aspect of the business, authoritatively unified under imaginative but single-minded direction.
Never has keeping ahead of the competition been so daunting. The exponential pace of technology is shrinking product life cycles, providing instantaneous knowledge about a company’s product launches, and has opened up every company to world-round competition. The bad news—it is only going to get worse.
So, how does a company insulate itself from the accelerating, deleterious impacts of expanded competition? Whether your company produces a product or a service, the challenge is the same. (For ease of communication, I will refer to both as ‘products’ throughout this article). More specifically one has to ask, how does your company create competitive advantages and protection for your business—what Warren Buffet calls economic moats? And, can any economic moat last very long in today’s exponential world?
And what, exactly, does such a moat look like?
Well, I would argue that the very best moat to have, and the only one to withstand the ever-changing world, is to create a brand.
It is, in fact, something of an argument.
Tesla’s CEO and futurist, Elon Musk, asserts that the only competitive protection in
today’s world is innovating faster than the competition. In essence, he dismisses the concept of economic moats as outdated.
Perhaps.
Esta historia es de la edición July - August 2018 de The Smart Manager.
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Esta historia es de la edición July - August 2018 de The Smart Manager.
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Building A Quality Culture
A strong company culture defined by its values, beliefs, and behaviors, has a profound impact on its products and services. More so in today’s VUCA world, where to stay relevant and maintain a competitive edge, it is critical for organizations to build a culture that focuses on quality. Suresh Lulla, author of Quality Fables, elucidates through significant examples how creating a culture of quality is imperative to driving success and productivity.
Customers For Life
The history of General Motors in India can be traced back to the 1920s, when it became the first automotive company to set up an assembly plant in the country. The relationship since then has not been as fruitful as GM would have hoped. GM’s flagship brand, Chevrolet, was introduced in India to build upon the success of the popular Opel marque. However, success has been fleeting at best—an issue that GM India is determined to rectify. It aims to do so by adopting a two-pronged approach: using customer feedback to influence product development, and delivering a superior sales-to-service experience.
The Digital Shift
… technology will radically disrupt HR in the near future. Indeed, it is already changing the way HR works and the role it plays and opening the door to a new type of “digital HR” function.1 The rise of digital and social media is changing the dynamics of HR and creating new ways of hiring, engaging, and retaining employees.
The Story Of Telling
“The best brands are built on great stories,”* this remark by Ian Rowden best captures the strategy of diligent brand building. Much more than attractive logos or the products themselves, what builds a brand is how successfully a story is woven around it. Brand marketers have to be good storytellers indeed.
Complexity Is Simpler Than You Think
Kay Kendall and Glenn Bodinson, authors of Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way, shatter myths about excellence models such as Baldrige and EFQM.
Proponents of Isolation Never Become Victors
Multilateralism in the political and economic space has always led to frameworks that favor the mighty. WTO was no exception. With agriculture kept out of its purview, it could never become a truly fair and free trading system. China was the only large emerging economy that exploited relative openness in low-cost manufactured goods to take full advantage of the system. Other emerging economies could at best garner minor gains.
A History Lesson (From Year One) for Trump and the Brexit Crowd: Isolationism Has Never Worked!
Professor Stephane Garelli on growing isolationism.
A Win-Win Game
Business is not a sport where some stakeholder has to lose or fare badly for others to do well. Building an atmosphere of trust and transparency between all stakeholders will help companies retain them even during adverse times.
A Sustainable Model
With a total market value of $4.3 trillion and an employment base of at least 1.3 million direct employees and millions of others indirectly employed, platforms have become an important economic force.*Companies today are constantly looking for ways to build platforms—Infosys Ltd announced its plans of monetizing its platforms to make them a $2 billion business by March 2021. But are all platform businesses successful?
Custom Made
…three in four consumers said they receive too many emails from brands, and one-fifth said they could not handle the current volume…69 per cent have ‘unfollowed’ brands on social media, closed their accounts or cancelled subscriptions.*In these times, when the market is flooded with products and services, the most efficent way to engage customers is to offer them customized content. To achieve this, brands need to focus on observing the nuances of individual preferences.
