Scott Burleson, Senior Vice-President with The AIM Institute, has published a new book: The Statue in the Stone: Decoding Customer Motivation with the 48 Laws of Jobs-to-be-Done Philosophy. Jobs-to-be-Done is a framework for understanding the relationship between customer needs and the products they purchase. This book draws deeply from the works of Lance Bettencourt, Clayton ... Read More
Dan Adams: Congratulations! How long have you been working on this project? Scott Burleson: Thanks! I started working on a book about 14 years ago. It was originally going to be a comprehensive guide for product managers. But the deeper I went, the more that I realized that my true passion was much more about ... Read More
For decades, “maximize shareholder wealth” has been the mantra recited in boardrooms. This is changing: Jack Welch even called it “the dumbest idea in the world.” It’s a lovely result, but a lousy goal. Your employees need goals that are actionable and inspiring. Chasing quarterly earnings fails this test. Instead, focus employees on creating superior customer value through new products. This leads to profitable, sustainable organic growth… which reliably leads to increasing shareholder wealth.
More in video, Leader’s Guide to B2B Organic Growth series, Video Lesson #5
I believe it should be this: Leave your business stronger than you found it. It doesn’t matter how good those soon-forgotten quarterly financial results were. If the leader weakened the business by degrading its ability to grow—through either neglect or raiding capabilities for short term gain—that leader failed. I’m puzzled that boards of directors and executive teams allow business leaders to perform well in the short term while damaging the long-term health of their business. Very odd.
More in article, B2B Organic Growth: Moving to earned growth
Do your new product development teams deal only with facts? Or are “factoids” interspersed, cleverly hiding among the facts? The Oxford English Dictionary defines a factoid as “an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.” Better to clearly identify and separate your assumptions from facts at the onset of your project… and rigorously investigate the assumptions until your project is based on facts alone.
More in video De-risking Transformational Projects
CoatingsTech publishes “New Product Blueprinting: How to Avoid Commercial Risk in New Product Development” by Dan Adams. In this article, Dan draws on pragmatic and proven techniques for better understanding market needs and provides a “blueprint” to help new product teams eliminate commercial risk before products are even developed. About CoatingsTech As the flagship publication ... Read More
Peter Drucker said there are only two purposes of business—innovation and marketing—and all other business functions are simply costs. Funny thing is that the unit of innovation and the unit of marketing are the same: customer outcomes. If you don’t understand customer outcomes—their desired end-results—you will neither innovate properly to satisfy those outcomes, nor effectively promote your solutions to them. A clever gentleman, that Mr. Drucker.
More in e-book, Leader’s Guide to B2B Organic Growth