Understanding The Value Of Networks.

Networks. I adore them. I graduated as an Electrical Engineer in the department Network Theory at Eindhoven University of Technology. That explains it somewhat I guess.Below I look at networks in a conceptual way. There is no need to be an avid networker to understand this.

Let’s start. A network, any network, consists of nodes and links. It is often said that networks are valuable. Let’s agree. Where exactly is that value? It is in the links.

  1. Client is King. No way! The relation (link) with client (node) is King. If you let your client dictate your business, you better close your company now. We use account managers to manage the link, not to manage the client or node. This results in value creation for both nodes, your company and your client. If you are a very product oriented company, my product is so good everybody will buy it, you are focusing on your own node and forgetting about the value of the link which potential clients use to give you feedback about their real needs.
  2. In my telecom days we talked about nodes: phone switches, and links: transmission systems. The value for an operator sits in the links. Tele in telecom. The nodes don’t create value, despite that switches are expensive intelligent machines. They are cost centers. Those used to be manual
    operators. Going automatic, thanks to the undertaker Almond Strowger, has reduced the cost.
  3. Same with railways, you pay for traveling on a link, not for sitting, and waiting at a railway station. Most of us hate being waiting at a station.
  4. Internet platforms. Technically we have a data center and users on phones and PCs. Their value is often expressed in how many users they have. Hence we are counting links. Here is an issue, these links bringing value are physically owned by the telecom operators. Telecom operators complain about not making enough money of these links, their physical infrastructure. A too low ROA, Return On Assets. To me it means that the business models currently in use are not sustainable. Expect changes sooner or later. It also tells me that internet platforms are overvalued.
  5. Social networks. You are interested in connections, followers and likes. Those are links. LinkedIn offers you the opportunity to establish a connection with someone, that is a link and you hope you get something out of that, a client or a job. LinkedIn, the name refers to links, have you noticed?
  6. In your personal network these links give you access to knowledge and opportunities. Look at these links as ways to get what you need, things that are complementary to you.
  7. A link is managed by the two nodes it connects to. Like a Joint Venture. You are an investor in a link and expect value and the same is valid for the other side of the link.
  8. What about links that are not directly connected to you? You can reach them via your links. The best example is if you want to get something done, like getting a new job. You launch a request via the links you have and you have noticed already that hardly anyone has an answer. However they have their own links and one of these may have that job or solution you were looking for. I guess you have experienced that after a few days you get a message that says hey I have a friend that is interested, can, is willing, etc..
  9. Now let’s go into your brain. You have a lot of nodes, knowledge. You know how to fix bicycles, you can write poems, you know how to make Belgian waffles. Just three, there are way more. When you want to be creative and a good problem solver try to see the unknown links between all these nodes, (i.e. your knowledges). You will be surprised how that often leads to solutions. High intelligence goes hand in hand with connecting nodes by revealing hidden links. Good to know too that humorists do that very often. They show hidden links that are funny. If you look at the background of many known humorists you see that many have academic master degrees. Good example is Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean), he has an MSc in Electrical Engineering from Oxford University. Your links in your head also help you to memorize something by linking it to something else. Who said it? What was the topic? A funny example is when they ask you to tell a joke, you probably won’t know any joke immediately. Once you know one you suddenly remember many more. They are linked in your head.
  10. This leads to our education systems. We teach nodes, let students memorize nodes. I think it is better to focus on teaching how to link these nodes, thinking about what you have learned and how it links to other knowledge. I am very happy that Electrical Engineer studies do so, I have done exams with all the books on the exam table. Can I really bring my books? Yes it won’t help you if you don’t understand the topic. Further more I went to the The University of Chicago Booth School of Business because they teach you how to think, how to use these links. Many business schools, even the top schools, talk about nodes only. You get an MBA, the B stands for Blabla.
  11. What about one link and two nodes? A link between two persons or a link between two companies connects two nodes. Or a person connected to a company. Two nodes can be be Common, Complementary of Conflictive (3C) and that determines the link. Links with two common nodes are easy, links that connect complementary nodes are more work and give results and obviously avoid conflictive links.
  12. The number of all links is roughly the square of the number of nodes. It is described by Metcalf’s Law. A network also requires maintenance. Spend some time to review your links and remove those that do not add value (anymore). Or like in telecom, take them temporarily out of service.

FOCUS ON THE LINKS NOT ON THE NODES.

Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.

– Leonardo Da Vinci

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Posted in Communications, Education, Globalization, Intelligence, Networking, Networks, Relations, Social Networks, Technology

THE RIGHT KIND OF LOUD

09ZCNJMKRTHE RIGHT KIND OF LOUD
Author: Kim A. Page.
BOOK REVIEW

When you read business books you wonder if it would be possible to compact the content into 4 to 5 pages. In most cases the answer is yes. Even the Seven Habits by Stephen Covey, one of my favorites, can be found all over the web in condensed versions. Now selling books is a business and the number of pages, read kilos, is important to get a publisher on board.

Working myself in radio, talking in public often, selling and even teaching I claim that I can give a valid opinion about this book. I will give you the reasons why you must get a copy.

Having read the The Right Kind of Loud by Kim A. Page I got a totally different opinion about this self-improvement book. This book avoids the long filler content (I met with the CEO of a 5B company, etc.), therefore every page has good content and exercises. Like a training course almost, however not one that the Monday after a training course goes onto the shelf and life continuous in the office. This book is really about communications, a skill we continuously need to improve in a loud world.

Very appealing is that it is written out of experience by the author herself. Including her failures. Communications is transmitting rational and emotions. Without emotions the message will not that well be perceived. The book itself is written that way, a balanced combination of rational and emotions. It avoids dry academic content, seen by many as boring.

Business books are sometimes very American and during reading you hear a voice telling you, ok but this won’t work in my environment and culture. The Right Kind of Loud is a global book with experiences from three continents, truly global. Written by a polyglot that speaks 6 languages.

Reading you will recognize the examples that we all stumble upon. Exercises are given how you can avoid these awkward situations. Let me point out that the exercises are indexed in the last chapter, with a reference to the text. You have the information what to do now right at your fingertip. Therefore, this is a book to keep in your bag. The size is perfect, not too long, not too short. No need to read the chapters in the printed order. No time? Read what you need to know.

I enjoyed that the stories link with other fields of expertise, giving the book a holistic component. This makes it understandable and for those in sales there are some handy explanations. Don’t forget the author sells her services to her clients. As such the content is practical and proven.

Waiting now for the sequel….

In the meantime  watch Kim’s Ted Talk here   https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/right-kind-loud-peter-j-m-simons/?published=t

 

Posted in Communications, Decision making, Globalization

The Internet Of Things.  Things And Thoughts.

The Internet of Things, or short IoT. What did we have before that? Internet of humans? Don´t we humans use things like PCs, laptops and phones to connect to the internet? Yes. And that has consequences too. Humans are great in making mistakes and then blame the internet. And humans can decide to switch on and off the device or change it settings. Autonomous devices that are not meant to be configured frequently is a different ball game.

The Internet of Things as it is developing now has so far three issues that have to be overcome:

The first is safety. There are many articles written about it. No need to add more in this post. ‎Unfortunately we see totally unsafe devices being connected to the internet. Why? The devices are made by hardware manufacturers. Their DNA is hardware. Think about car companies. They view the world from a car perspective with an add-on Internet connection. Let me be clear: I don’t say they have no knowledge, it is simply an add on to a car for them. What is the result? Cars get connected to the internet using Android. Does not make me happy, Android not exactly the safest OS out there. It would be better to come with no OS solutions, like in an airplane. It is pretty much in line in writing code in assembler language.

Second, having said hardware brings us to another issue: hardware has a cost price, COGS, Cost Of Goods Sold. It boils down to gross margin and if competition heats up a price erosion may destroy these margins. ‎ Therefore, will we see many startups trying to build hardware? Probably yes. The issue is investors. Many investors prefer software business with its lucrative 100% gross margin. In certain areas I predict that there will be progress in Internet of Things hardware startups. I am referring to the Brainport area of Eindhoven in the Netherland. That is a techno area that has started innovating with hardware more than 100 years ago. They understand very well how to manage hard ware.

The third topic is my favorite. Are you annoyed by ringtones? Notification tones? ‎Just imagine that every piece of IoT hardware would generate a tone like Whatsapp on your smart phone. It would result in a cacophony of sounds. Obviously, this is not what we are waiting for. Solutions are being researched:  Prof Berry Eggen at Eindhoven University of Technology talked recently on the radio about his view. His department at my Alma Mater is studying how humans perceive sound and wants to apply the findings to avoid beeping and jingling devices all over the place being less or not annoying.

The last word about the Internet of Things has not been said yet. Who owns the data? Other legal aspects. Think a bit and more questions will come to your mind.

I suggest you visit the IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona on October 3-5, 2017. There we can meet and have discussions about the Internet of Things.

Posted in Communications, Innovation, Internet of Things, IoT, Technology

How Artificial Intelligence can boost Corporate Innovation

Recently the 10 year old daughter of my friend Ed  asked him if Artificial Intelligence means we can stop thinking. Read more about that at CNBC.  We both were perplexed and were not able to give an answer to this curious question. This extremely smart question cannot be simply answered with a yes or no.  It triggered my own thinking and curiosity, after we had just mentioned the word Innovation.

How will Artificial Intelligence contribute to Innovation in a Corporate Environment?

This little girl is right and wrong.  Given her age, she thinks in a binary fashion: yes or no,  good or bad,  like or hate.  This is normal, my 10 year old son does the same.  This way of looking at things is very much ingrained in western culture.  Good or bad. It is a simple concept. Religions use it all the time.  And in Hollywood, they make movies with good guys versus bad guys.  And good always wins after 90 – 110 minutes.   Good or bad, there is no in-between.

Well there is, the real world is analog, not binary, and we need to think.  Thinking is tough, and something many people really do not like to do, because thinking sometimes leads to conclusions they don’t like. Good or bad is easier. Well, for those who don’t like to think, there is now a solution.

Computers have taken over a large part of our workload and have been becoming more and more intelligent. They can do even more of our work as they get more intelligent, so therefore we call it Artificial Intelligence. And that is not good or bad thinking anymore.  It does not mean that we have to give over the entire thinking process to Artificially Intelligent machines.  There is still soooo much thinking to do.  We hardly have time to think. Do you? Can you afford to sit one day a week and really think? We had a long discussion on that, at the University of Chicago when I studied there. We concluded that spending 10% of our time thinking would be ideal:  half a day per week. In reality, that is impossible.  Now if we can outsource a part of that thinking to a machine, wouldn’t that be great?

What parts of thinking should be outsourced?

Specialists hardly innovate.  Innovation comes from holistic approaches.  In a corporate environment, it means looking beyond the silos.  We are living in a time where corporations are silos, and they are linked at the C level.  Even there, the CEO may be biased to promote one silo more than another: the silo she came from.  There are CEOs that come from finance, from sales, from engineering, and they tend to be biased towards their silo.

Innovation has two main angles:

Beginning in the 20th century, really new things came into society: radio, TV, aircrafts, cars, phones.   I call them new, yes they had some relation with things from the past (cars were coaches without horses etc.), but new solutions came to life. This created verticals of industry that hardly collaborated.  They really had nothing in common.

Later that century, we started to innovate by combining things.  We had telco, we had computers, and we had data transmission. We combined that and created the smartphone.   Just close your eyes and do an exercise, find 5 of these combinations.  These combinations are mathematically easy to make, with N products, technologies or existing solutions, you can make N(N-1)/2 combinations, it grows with the square of N. Remember Metcalfe’s Law?  So just run systematically through your corporation, define the combinations and decide per which combinations make sense.  Many will not make sense.

This combining of ideas and the subsequent collaborations, means crossing the borders between silos. And these borders are real medieval walls, not easy to break down.

artificial-intelligence

Back to Artificial Intelligence.  Instead of the CEO thinking at the top of all these silos, Artificial Intelligence could help us to think better at lower levels.   It can help to break these barriers between the silos.   These barriers exist and are tough to break  (“Stupid sales people”, “Bean counters”, “Oh my god, engineers” are well know expressions I have heard many times).  It means humans in a corporate environment are not too keen on communicating between these silos, to think and collaborate cross-silo, but an Artificial Intelligence machine can do this without bias.  Every silo feeds its knowledge into the system and Artificial Intelligence does the rest.  Yes I admit, very oversimplified, but this is the source of innovation in my view.

Conclusion:  Artificial Intelligence can help CEOs to get things done by delegating more of their C level thinking to the lower echelons. And it is about time we listen more to our children.  They really are smarter than we think.

Posted in Artifical Intelligence, Decision making, Innovation, Productivity, Strategy, Technology

How My BlackBerry Passport and BlackBerry Blend Saved My Day

Posted in Uncategorized

Working with my BlackBerry Passport

blackberry_passport_working

A question I receive frequently: You have an iPhone?

Nope!

No??? But you always have the latest gadgets?

Yes and no. Only if they make sense, common sense. And we all know common sense is the least common of all senses. Especially in the world of mobile devices I would say. In addition an iPhone is not a latest gadget. It is an innovation from 2007 or so. Every year they add a higher number to its name and make its size bigger until it starts bending or exploding.

As said I do not have an iPhone or tablet: they both cost me precious time, they are perhaps “cool” to have but real time-wasters. In business I have to stand out as a leader. I would destroy my image with popular not well thought through products begging for an outlet to charge outdated technology. Why I do not use Android? Not secure. I am not wasting time on writing about Android.

So what device do I use? It is called a BlackBerry Passport and I use it for working. I use it for getting things done.

Here are some ways I use it. Well yes if you use an iOS or and Android device you probably can do some of these things too. Will take longer I am afraid. So don’t even waste your time trying.

1) Working on a physical keyboard. This physical keyboard let’s me write long text. If you only Whatsapp “hi where are you” and typos are your brand anyway a touch screen keyboard is fine for you. But come on admit, it is horrible. It was cool. I can use down time like flights or train trips to the write serious documents or mails without typos. Or edit them. On average one hour per day I work writing on my BlackBerry Passport. Not only the keyboard is a big plus: its gestures on the tactile keyboard make me work fast. No need any more to pull out a PC and no worry about battery life. It has never died. The charger goes into checked luggage.

Read more ›

Posted in Blackberry 10, BlackBerry Passport, Communications, Innovation, Productivity, Smartphones, Technology

Relations

“Client Is King”. An expression believed to be true by so many. Well I am afraid it cannot be true. It is simply not possible to satisfy all the demanding needs of a client. Especially clients with an attitude of a Tiran. Clients can destroy your company. Wouldn’t it be better to say “The Relation With A Client Is King”? That means a situation where both client and supplier get better. Otherwise the relation has no long term future. Relation is the key word. It is the relation between the client and supplier that is king. Not the client, nor the supplier.

Our society is built out of people organized in companies, associations, foundations, you name it.  Between people there are relations or not. Good relations or bad relations. Since the birth of social media we have been talking more and more about relations  than ever before. Networking is another of these buzzword. It means adding relations or connections as they are commonly called in social media.

Networks can be composed of humans and their relations. We can also look at networks from a more generic viewpoint. Then we talk about nodes and links.

Are the links or the nodes the most important?
Net

Network configurations.

Well there are simply more and more links once you have 4 or more nodes. A fully interlinked network, also called a fully meshed network, with N nodes has N(N-1)/2 links. Hence 3 nodes have three links to interconnect them fully. Add one more node and you have already 6 links interconnecting all nodes. That grows faster than the number of nodes. It grows at the speed of N square. This is called Metcalfe’s law.

In the telecommunication industry the links are what makes the communications go tele, distant. If we would look at a balance sheet of a classic phone company we see that around 50% to 60% of the asset value is in the links.  For nodes you would find only 25% to 35% asset value.

In a marriage the link defines the marriage, not the nodes.

I can make a long list of examples of the importance of the link between the nodes.

How do you manage a link? And who manages it? The answer is that the two nodes at the end, or the two people that maintain the relation manage the link. They have to look at the quality of the relation by using the CCC method:

– What do we have in Common?
– What do we have Complementary?
– Where are the Conflicts?

Pyramid
Link quality pyramid.

Answer these three questions. The answers will generate a list of topics and count this topic list. Plot it into a pyramid. A good pyramid has a stable balanced base, a good balance between Common and Complimentary. In addition it has not too many topics in the top (Conflict).

What do we see in the business world? In corporate training? The people get trained in hard skills. “Node Skills“. What makes a company fly high? Managing the nodes and the links, the relations. Therefore “Link Skills” are extremely important. This includes a good communication over the link between the nodes. The company PERFORMANT that I have founded with several others ensures in its training program that the communication over the link is optimized. “Link Skills” like team work are given high priority. For example, it is important that we communicate well to avoid assumptions and that perceptions and reality are clearly kept separate and well understood.

About to hire someone? Make sure the person understands how to manage the links.

More: Read Michael Simmons “The surprising Science behind how super connectors scale their networks”

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Posted in Communications, Human Resources, Marketing and Sales, Relations

Burn your competitors

Obviously products have life cycles. Most companies provide products and have to launch frequently new products because simply said; their existing products are reaching the end of their life cycle. The solution then is a product upgrade with a new version number. The car industry is a good example. Peugeot N0M. Always with a 0 (zero) in the middle. Apple releases its iOS 5,6,7 etc.

What is really disrupting? How can you do a disruption in a way that your company takes advantage and wipe out the competition? Well, let us look at nature where trees compete for space and water. What does a pine tree do? How does it compete? Pine trees are pyrophyte it means they tolerate fire and use fire to gain terrain. Have you ever noticed what happens in a wild fire of pine trees? Their pine apples fly around burning and their structure is such that they burn really well. The seeds survive the heat. Pine trees love to burn, they are full of resin. Once they burn, they burn all the trees and everything around them.
Once the blaze is over we see the surviving seeds developing into new pine trees and many times the pine tree itself that caught fire starts growing again. After ten to twenty years the area is green again but with pine trees, no other trees can be found.

pine fire1

Back to business, no do not burn down your company. Insurance companies have smart investigators. Look at your products and at the sector you are in. What can you do that kills an entire sector including your products in it? Make sure you have a new plan ready that seeds new business. Like the pine apples.

Some examples:

In the 90s Nokia started to add a camera to its cell phones. It attacked both the competition and the camera sector. The last sector still is suffering (Kodak, Polaroid). Now the entire camera sector is suffering from smart phones. Nokia killed the simple GSM phone market in which it was doing very well.

Another example is Coca Cola. The company from Atlanta launched new products in the soda market and eliminated the Classic drink. However here we see that clients requested the classical product to be brought back into the supermarkets.

What to consider before you set your own pine tree on fire?
• Have you talked to potential clients? Investigated the market? How will they react when you burn the existing product?
• Do you really have the competences and skills in house to rise as a phoenix? Do you know how to make that new product?
• What is competition doing now? Ask your clients, they know more than you think.

Applying the pyrophyte strategy is risky. Like most risky undertakings they can be very rewarding. At least the press will follow your actions.

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Posted in Strategy

Increase your sales

The most important number there is in a company is the revenue number. Call it sales. The 12 points below will trigger a change in the way you think about selling.

Usage increase
Find out with what your product is consumed. The best example is toothpaste. If you are in the toothpaste business, make sure that the toothbrush manufacturers make longer toothbrushes. We all have the tendency to cover the full toothbrush with toothpaste. Ask your dentist, she will tell you that half that amount will do the job too.

Partner
Have your product already packed with a good selling product. You could make packages of tooth brush and tooth paste together. If you buy a new phone, some apps are preinstalled already: I found Evernote and Box on my new Blackberry Z10. I probably would never have downloaded these apps.

Raise the price
Sounds counterintuitive not? Ask yourself how much is your product of the total price of your client’s end product. If it is less than one percent, raise the price. As an example if you make injectors for diesel engines for ships, find out what the cost price is to manufacturer that engine. Will my price increase affect the client’s gross margin or the end price? Now how to raise the price in front of your client? Come with an improved version at a slightly higher rate and announce that the current product will be discontinued.

Sell modules, the Lego model
Young or new tech entrepreneurs tend to build a product with all the features in it. That is their passion. They then discover that it is difficult to sell. Make a minimal viable product at a competitive price and up sell the features later. Once a client has chosen your solution and they are happy, up selling becomes easy. In extreme cases, you give away the product and make the money on the up selling. This is done with consumables that are being up sold in the medtech equipment sector. Give away the machine and sell consumables at a high gross margin.

Variable recurrent
The classic model well known is: Book, bill and ship, get paid. What about a usage fee? A monthly fee? Offer something variable that makes your invoices a variable cost for your client. You do not buy Rolls Royce jet engines. You pay Rolls Royce for the minutes these engines run. An aircraft that is not used for a week is not generating revenues, nor is there any cost for the engines. Compare it with a pay per click.

The Decoy Effect
Change the perception of value, offer three products:
Product A, with 5 features: 50 Euros,
Product B, with 7 features: 60 Euros,
Product C, with 9 features: 95 Euros.
Make sure you have enough Product B in stock. By adding a far more expensive product with a marginal increase in features the product just below is perceived as a good offer. Remember that changes in perception drive us.

Discount is not lowering price
Supermarkets use this. Discount, give 40% off. Now if you would lower the price by 40% the effect is less. I once analyzed at Chicago Booth two years of supermarket sales data of hygienic paper products and the highest jump in sales was always when a discount was given. Discounts are perceived as time limited, lowering prices is seen as desperately trying to sell.

Different brands
Make sure your product is well positioned. Here is the idea: you cannot be a solution to everybody. In sales you cannot have the best price for everybody. Once the price is set, there are always customers that would have paid more. Launch a high end brand, sometimes a better looking packaging is enough already.

Placement
For retail it is important to have the expensive products close to the short walkers, the fast clients, i.e. walking in and quickly walking to check out. I recently walked into a garden center to buy pot earth and I was shocked by the price of bags of eearth that were very close to checkout. I spent some time investigating and a 60% cheaper product was stored outside. For your e-commerce you can “bury” the cheaper products or services deeper im your web.

Find other applications
Very obvious but often overlooked. Let me give a simple example. If you make refrigerator trucks to transport fish, you might want to consider the meat sector too. Have a good thought about what you do. Then ask where can you sell your product or solution too with or without adapting your product?

Sell first, then build product
Not that obvious. My experience in telecoms is that our software product was build after it was sold to an operator under the condition that they would help to design it. The result was that other telecom operators immediately recognized the product as the solution to their daily problems. The competition had developped their product in house and failed to meet the real operational needs. Result was an incredible increase in sales. Check what David Burkus writes about in Harvard Business Review. Try to come to a similar arrangement with one of your clients.

Up sell via post sales services
If you provide a customer service, train the phone operators to ask the right questions. If a customer service operator has solved a problem for a client a so called “sweet moment” exists. That is exactly the moment you can try to see if there is a possibility to sell an additional product or service. Insurance companies are good at that, once they solve a problema, like when you had a car accident, they will ask if you have more cars in your family. If the answer is yes, this leadis immediately forwarded to the sales department.

Try to see what you can apply to your business to increase your sales.

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Posted in Marketing and Sales

The challenge of the 21st century

In one way or another it seems we are in a world that has changed so much that we ended up in an economic turmoil causing job destruction. Has something changed and we have not adapted to it? If yes what is it? Let us go back a bit into history and I am going to narrow my focus onto Europe only.

After the 2nd world war and its consequent destruction there was demand for whatever you name it. End 40s and beginning 50s entrepreneurs started companies to cope with this demand. The founders where the fathers and mothers of the so called baby boomers. Many of these companies did very well and growth started because of the high and growing demand. In order to keep up with demand, production methodologies became more sophisticated in the 50s and 60s. In the 60s and 70s the baby boom generation started to enter the company of their parents and learned together with them how to handle demand and how to supply.

The following 80s and 90s were the years of increasing the quality. Do you remember TQT? Total quality management? ISO? Quality had to improve because the demand side of the equation had reached higher levels of buying power and had become more sophisticated. Competition started to be important. A competition in product features and in quality.

How was their marketing and sales? Let me say very traditional, with sales agents, sales reps knocking on doors. Advertising talked about the features of the product. Demand was still growing but not that steep anymore. Supply also was growing and perhaps faster than demand.
In the 80s and 90s the baby boomers were now trained and running these companies. Most companies would supply on a regional or national scale. Some exported already.

Around the change of century we see the start of globalization, we see the birth of the web and we suddenly find ourselves with some sectors in overcapacity in supply. All problems that management was and perhaps still is not used too. Remember they had learned how to run a company in the 60s,70s and 80s. Also politicians, trained in these years now started to wonder how to create growth and jobs and in most cases failed and still fail to keep their promises. General comment is that it is not fair that Asia is cheaper. They cause the problem, it is not our fault mentality.

In Cohen & Simons we use the following graph to explain this situation:

curves

Therefore we have ended up with companies still very product oriented, trying to sell with sales reps with many contacts, knocking doors and making the best product that everybody will love and buy. The CEO of a 20M UK company once asked me “why is it that with our superior quality there is not a queue waiting to buy our products?”
Today companies have to compete on their marketing and sales skills, something current management is not used to. Remember they learned their job in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Interesting is that if you look at startups, many of them still invest the majority of their cash in adding features. And sales? We will go viral or people will love this product and become excited and buy it.

Time to shift gears and redesign the business. Unfortunately a vast majority of companies still uses and wants to use the business models they grew up with. Product features, hiring technical skills instead of attitude, paying sales commissions only and management by control and command are not the way to go anymore. Yes it is difficult to get out of the comfort zone.

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Posted in Globalization