The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen What is disruptive innovation The term “disruptive” is frequently used to describe successful businesses and business strategies, but Clayton Christensen has a specific definition of disruption in The Innovator’s Dilemma. For Christensen, disruption occurs when a firm enters a market by providing a “not good enough” solution to a problem that an incumbent company is already ...

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael Porter In Competitive Strategy, Michael Porter describes the famous “five forces” model which is taught in business schools far and wide. The five forces are key to the analysis of industries for the purposes of selecting a winning strategy relative to competitors and environment. Michael Porter’s Five Forces The five forces that ...

High Intensity Marketing by Idris Mootee   Idris Mootee defines the first phase of market positioning as selection of the four C’s: customers, competitors, cost structure & channel choice, and competitive advantage. These four elements allow a company to find a market segment where the company’s distinctive strengths are able to satisfy customer needs better than competitors. After the positioning plan is ...

High Intensity Marketing by Idris Mootee In the introduction to High Intensity Marketing by Idris Mootee, Jules Goddard gives his take on the evolution of marketing. He says “Post-Modern Marketing” encompasses on the complete value chain and is focused on the customer. For Goddard, winning at marketing requires “out-performing the competitor’s predictive models of customer response, essentially the skill of learning ...

Kotler on Marketing: How to Create, Win, and Dominate Markets by Philip Kotler In Kotler On Marketing, Philip Kotler introduces consumption chain analysis as one of three ways to find new market opportunities: 1) supplying something in short demand; 2) Supplying an existing product or service in a new or superior way; or 3) Supplying a new product or service. A consumption ...

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits Traditional product development processes include an intense customer requirements process at the beginning, but then separate from the customer until the marketing and sales phases begin at the completion of development. Using a waterfall approach pushes learning into later stages ...

There is an overabundance of theories to explain the performance of companies. However, what makes one company a winner is often what makes another company a loser. A variety of cognitive biases are found in literature attempting to identify drivers of corporate performance. The Halo Effect: … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers by Phil Rosenzweig   Business and ...

The Intelligent Entrepreneur by Bill Murphy Jr. This book tells the stories of three Harvard Business School graduates (Marc Cenedella, Chris Michel, and Marla Malcom) who founded several successful businesses. Chapters describing the founders’ lives and business pursuits alternate with a ten rules of “intelligent entrepreneurship”. Key themes include thinking big, asking “who cares?” about customer needs, finding the right partners, ...