Tag Archives | strategy

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Pricing, value and the incentive to buy

Pricing your product or service is a difficult process that can involve multiple points of influence – cost, existing market, competitors, etc. But people frequently overlook or perhaps misunderstand the role that value plays in actually achieving any price ultimately set. The typical way we think about a sale Let’s look at both sides of […]

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The non-customer

In marketing, we are all told to clearly identify our ideal customer.   We segment, differentiate and profile the people who we think are most likely to buy from us.  Typically in any single industry, we have identified the same group of people as our competitors.  That’s how it happens right?  We all do the […]

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Avoiding the Peter Principle

In hierarchical business structures, people will be promoted as long as they continue to work competently.  This is the primary theory behind the Peter Principle as formulated by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in 1969.  It goes on to say that eventually they will be promoted to a position that they are no longer competent – their […]

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Alternatives vs Substitutes

I’m finally reading Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.  I say finally because its been on my reading list for a couple of years now.  This is a great book for anyone interested in business strategy and although many of the references are out-dated, the information is still relevant and compelling.  There […]

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The 100 year company

There’s been this series of intersecting ideas coming at me lately centered around business strategy and the planning time-horizon. Recently, Evernote announced that their latest round of funding was not an exit strategy for its founders but a foundation for building a “100 year company” I read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh that describes how Zappos was built and […]

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