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Disruptive Business Models | N2Growth Blog

N2Growth Blog

Why didn’t Folgers recognize the retail consumer demand for coffee and develop a Starbucks type business model? To survive for long enough to become a member of that vaunted oligarchy is no mean feat, and in a competitive market requires that one focus on factors related to process standardization and cost containment.

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Breaking Up the Retail-Price Confusopoly

Harvard Business Review

The Conversation Blogs The Conversation Breaking Up the Retail-Price Confusopoly 8:25 AM Tuesday November 30, 2010 by Joshua Gans | Comments () Email Tweet This Post to Facebook Share on LinkedIn Print This years holiday shopping season improved somewhat over last year with sales likely to top $11 billion.

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The Innovation Health Care Really Needs: Help People Manage Their Own Health

Harvard Business Review

Seeing the potential to improve health with simple primary-care strategies, some of the biggest incumbent players are inviting new entrants focused on empowering consumers into their highly regulated ecosystems, bringing down costs. These astronomical costs are largely due to the way competition works in American health care.

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Why CEOs Should Watch the Royal Wedding

Harvard Business Review

This doesn't include the cost of the gifts others lavish on the newlyweds. They focus attention not only on the message but on the cost of getting out the message, which can undercut the message. A 2010 study showed that the public cost of supporting the monarchy was more than $55 million in 2009. In the U.S.,

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The 4 Types of Small Businesses, and Why Each One Matters

Harvard Business Review

A 2010 poll by The Pew Research Center found that the public had a more positive view of them than any other institution in the country – they beat out both churches and universities, for instance, as well as tech companies. America loves small businesses.

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The Right CEO Personality for Process Improvement

Harvard Business Review

As I think about companies that compete on consistent, low cost, reliable operations, most have or had leaders who were process innovators, such as Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines, Sam Walton at Wal-Mart, Ray Kroc at McDonalds, Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com, and Fred Smith at FedEx.

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What to Do When Your Future Strategy Clashes with Your Present

Harvard Business Review

region, as it navigates a dramatic shift from competing by offering integrated, comprehensive medical services to offering lower cost preventive care. MedStar operated nine hospitals, but realized that its long-held objective of increasing revenue and profits at those venues was unsustainable, given the outcries over runaway medical costs.