Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 18, 2016

In 1960, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt published a landmark paper in Harvard Business Review that urged executives to adapt by asking themselves, “What business are we really in?” ” Other attempts to adapt to Apple’s innovations, such as the Zune mp3 player, didn’t gain traction either.

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Company Levitt Succession Agility 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 5, 2016

Grove’s 1980 question remains as ruthlessly relevant to C-suites as Ted Levitt’s 1960 classic, “What business are you in?” They see disrupted incumbents from retail, finance, health care, transportation, professional services, and manufacturing requiring radical restructuring of assets, productivity , and innovation.

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Levitt Disaggregation Kaizen Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Christensen and two co-authors revisit where disruption theory stands today in a new HBR article, “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” As Ted Levitt pointed out 55 years ago, companies develop significant myopia over time, only seeing things that are squarely in the mainstream of their market.

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Disruptive Innovation Christensen Levitt Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2015

Edison’s insight provides a useful frame for viewing Tesla’s splashy launch of Tesla Energy and its battery systems — Powerwall for residential use and Powerpack for commercial, industrial, and utility customers. Will it be transformational? The second has to do with scope.

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Strategy Levitt Energy System 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 14, 2017

Like any number of industries, healthcare is being transformed by the explosion of low-cost data. How the most innovative providers are creating value. The late economist and marketing professor Theodore Levitt famously said “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

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Health Care Levitt Competitive Advantage Pharmaceuticals 9

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

In 1960, the editor of the Harvard Business Review, Theodore Levitt, wrote that the failure of railroads could be explained in part by the myopic view that they were in the railroad business and not the transportation business, which left them vulnerable to competition from cars, trucks, and planes.

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Health Care Levitt Film Chemicals 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 1, 2011

And that's a good thing: the industrial organization of publishing is not sacrosanct. Maybe it's a good time to dredge up a chestnut from Ted Levitt's classic HBR article, "Marketing Myopia." Does the publishing landscape look the same as it did in 1842? Certainly not. they were product-oriented instead of customer-oriented."

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Levitt Mass Marketing Simon eBook 13

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 15, 2015

For all their rhetoric about a digital future, established firms in most industries still sell mainly through traditional channels, while newcomers seize the virtual territory. This is typically the segment that industry incumbents zero in on. A gold-plated product or service. Making a quarter-inch hole is the job to be done.

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Marketing Company Levitt Film 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 24, 2013

In the words of Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt, “ People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. Disruptive innovation Global business' Every time a customer buys a product, they are trying to do a job that brings some value to them – and not necessarily what the product says on the label.

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Marketing B2B Levitt Disruptive Innovation 8

Joseph Lalonde

MARCH 14, 2018

Michael Levitt, CEO of BreakfastLeadership.com. The continual quest for knowledge is so important and I work hard to remind myself that I work in an ever-changing industry with evolving thoughts and theories. is a Senior Consultant with NextMove and Partner at Innovation Partners International and author of Conversations Worth Having.

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Succession Self-aware Learning-by-Doing Follow-up 316

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 26, 2015

While working with a huge Russian hydrocarbon company in Texas last year, our innovation conversation quickly zeroed in on customers. The innovation roadmap was hauled out and reviewed less in the spotlight of global opportunities than the cold reflection of domestic politics. The unhappy innovation inference? No one disagreed.

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Disruptive Innovation Levitt Tourism Incentives 8