B2BMX2018

A brand transformation perspective ZOMBIES/PHANTOMS/SHADOWS 3 Threats to Your Experience Innovation Initiatives 11 5 Christensen, Clayton M. (2013-10-22). The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Kindle Locations 128-131). Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition. The longer answer requires a lengthier treatment on the methodology of strategic segmentation, which we won't delve deeply into here. However, what we will share is that, from our perspective, segmentation is inherently strategic—a scientifically informed, but ultimately creative response to the relationship between an organization and the people relevant to it. We do not believe there is a single formula for success. But, our experience leads us to pay particular attention to the success factors listed below. Here are five tips for avoiding the apocalypse: 1. Frame your research problem carefully. Conduct executive interviews as an input to research design. If a new strategic segmentation model is going to be delivered to the organization by the executive team, it's a very good idea to ground the entire project on an up-to-date assessment of the strategic context as seen through the eyes of the executive team. And, in addition to the executive team, consider who the users of the insight will be, what problems they will need to address and what factors will make it more or less actionable for them. 2. Meet customers in their environment. The relationship of people to their environment is a relevant part of the research data. Contextual research provides a richer basis for strategic insight. And, because a critical factor in strategic segmentation insight is originality, under most circumstances it would be foolish to attempt to build a strategic segmentation model by means of quantitative research that was not preceded by primary qualitative work and a strategically thoughtful interpretation of that study. 3. Study the problem-space, not the market-space. To paraphrase Drucker, people rarely buy what the company thinks it sells them. If the research focuses too narrowly on the use of a particular product or service, it will be mostly blind to the substitutes and alternatives that are also part of the customer's problem-space. Pay attention to Theodore Levitt's question "What business are you in?" and if the answer sounds too much like the way other people in your industry speak, then broaden the scope of your enquiry. Also, pay attention to non-customers. Drucker argues: "[T]he first signs of fundamental change rarely appear within one's own organization or among one's own customers. Almost always they show up first among one's non customers." Clayton Christensen, commenting on why great companies fail argues that: …good management was the most powerful reason [the companies] failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in new technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership. 5 …segmentation is inherently strategic—a scientifically informed, but ultimately creative response to the relationship between an organization and the people relevant to it.

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