BLOG OF ADAM HARTUNG
Go Beyond Your Customers – Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft
I get the most heat when I talk about spending less time listening customers. But I'm not joking. To grow revenues and profits you have to go far beyond asking your customers - who are more likely to hold you back from growth than accelerate...
Growth is not a part-time job – White Space is Dedicated to Growth – P&G
Being an entrepreneur is not a part-time job. People who try starting businesses "between jobs" rarely succeed. It takes time, resources, careful listening to the marketplace and adroit adaptability to emerging needs to be a successful...
Look outside to grow, not inside – Goldman Sachs, CDOs, Strategy and HR
Did you ever carve into a tree, then return to look at the carving years later? If you did, you would have seen that the carving is the same distance from the ground. The tree grew from the outside, from its branches, not from the bottom. The...
What business are you in? Overcoming Identity – Apple & Hewlett Packard (HP)
"What business are you in?" is one of the most common business questions asked. People usually want a simple answer, like "I make widgets" or "I provide widget services." A simple answer allows people to easily cubbyhole the...
Phoenix Principle Leadership – CIOMagazine & IT Leadership
How to Improve IT Performance and Deploy Technology Faster The “White Space” approach to innovation helps to cut the time and cost of deploying new technologies.That's the title of my first column, published yesterday, for CIOMagazine. The four steps of The...
Pay Attention to “Fringe” Competition – CraigsList, Google, Tribune Corporation
"CraigsList is for hookers." That's what the General Manager at the Los Angeles Times told me in 2005. In a meeting to discuss the newspaper's future profitability I pointed out that 1/3 of his newspaper's revenues came from...
Phoenix Principle Power – Microsoft Stalling, Apple Growing
When will Apple have more revenues than Microsoft? How about later this year? Source: Robin Bloor, Bloor Group, Reproduced in SeekingAlpha.comMany of us remember the first Apple vs. Microsoft battle. Apple pioneered much of the personal computer...
White Space overcomes D&E – Apple and Microsoft
Apple's most recent earnings surprised almost everyone, to the topside. At SeekingAlpha.com "Apple Soars: Is this a Great Country or What" the author points out that all analysts are now calling for Apple's equity value to continue increasing. ...
Compete to Win – Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, News Corp.
News Corp. executives (and shareholders) need to be worried. Really worried. While they are busy trying to Defend their newspaper approach, including the planned move to charge everyone a subscription fee to access the Wall Street Journal on-line, there...
Crossing the Re-invention Gap – News and Chicago Tribune
Is news dying, or are newspapers dying? That's a critical question. Most of us know the demand for news is not dying - and if you needed reinforcement a recent McKinsey & Company study verified that the demand for news has increased (McKinsey...
More Microsoft in the Soup – Harvard Business Review getting it wrong!
Hi, two readings recently have really surprised me.Firstly, Dawn Beaupariant from the public relations firm Waggener Edstrom contacted me regarding my Forbes column. I learned this firm is the PR agency for Microsoft. They took exception to my Forbes...
Microsoft’s Dismal Future
"Microsoft's Dismal Future" is the title of my most recent column on Forbes.com. In it I compare Microsoft with such formerly great, but now struggling, companies as Xerox and Kodak. Looking at all the Lock-in at Microsoft, Balmer's...
Listening to Competition – Healthcare
Amidst the brouhaha over health care legislation, Harvard Business Review has produced a report "Megatrends in Global Health Care." One interesting statistic is that medical tourism - that's when someone leaves the USA to have a procedure like...
“Enterprise Customer” risk – RIM Blackberry and Apple iPhone
The second step of The Phoenix Principle is "Obsess about Competitors." This doesn't rile people up much. But when I tell them "I want you to dramatically cut the time you talk to and listen to customers - and invest that investigating...
What you don’t know can kill you – Facebook, Twitter, iPad, Kindle
Nancy Munro of Knowledgeshift.com posted a great blog "Technology was Blago's Enemy Again." Although many people watch The Apprentice, I'm not one. Apparently the former governor of Illinois was a contestant, and when he was challenged to lead...
Lost in the Swamp – Publishing – Random House, Tribune Corporation, News Corp.
Do you read more today, or less than you did 10 years ago? For most of us, the answer is more. Our ever present access to email and texting means we watch less TV, and pick up more from reading. Of course, we read a lot less paper than we used to...
Live or Die on Transitions – Tivo, Blockbuster, SGI, DEC, Palm, Cisco
Recently SeekingAlpha.com ran the article "Time for Tivo to say Ta Ta." The author (a professor) took the point of view that Tivo had filled a need, but now there were ample new options - such as on-line downloads - making Tivo obsolete. As a...
Value goes to growth – Apple, Microsoft, Sears/Kmart
Apple now has a market cap of $210B. Microsoft has a market cap of about $260B. To traditionalists, this must seem contradictory. Apple has fought its way into new markets, and has domination in none (except maybe the narrowly defined individual...
Pitching vs. listening – General Motors (GM) and Segway
General Motors and Segway have teamed up to do a new product launch. The new product is described at Freep.com in "GM, Partner to unveil 2-seater" and is called the EN-V. And there's almost no hope it will succeed. Too bad, because...
Disrupt to avoid failure – Blockbuster
Blockbuster Video is in big trouble. Most analysts think the company is going to file bankruptcy - unlikely to survive - with a mere $.30 stock price today. Most of us remember when the weekly (or more frequent) trip to Blockbuster was part of every day...
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