Imagine your business stopped innovating, your profits declined, and it is now budgeting time. To salvage next year, you’ll likely cut long-term costs, e.g. R&D or marketing, further reducing your ability to create high-value products. Next year, you’ll have even fewer options. This results in death or irrelevancy. If you’ve started this spiral, pull out quickly.
More in 2-minute video at 9. Avoid the commodity death spiral
Here’s how the Commodity Death Spiral works: First, you stop innovating and offer me-too products that are interchangeable with competitors’. This lets purchasing agents demand lower pricing, which lowers your profits. Now it’s budgeting time and your boss wants higher—not lower—profits, so you must reduce costs. You cut R&D and marketing since you don’t need them this year. Of course, you’ll have even less new product development capability next year.
Eventually, you reach the point of no return, and your business dies… or goes on “life support” and is no longer relevant. Sadly, many businesses are on this downward spiral right now, and either don’t know it, or don’t want to admit it. They need a wake-up call, or the employees in that business will suffer.
More in this 2-minute video, Avoid the commodity death spiral
Imagine your business stopped innovating, your profits declined, and it is now budgeting time. To salvage next year, you’ll likely cut long-term costs, e.g. R&D or marketing, further reducing your ability to create high-value products. Next year, you’ll have even fewer options. This results in death or irrelevancy. If you’ve started this spiral, pull out quickly.
More in article, The Commodity Death Spiral (Originally published in B2B Organic Growth Newsletter).