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Why Startups Fail: Six Issues to Avoid

Leading Blog

Tim Eisenmann is a professor at Harvard Business School, where he’s led The Entrepreneurial Manager , a required course for all of their MBAs. Marketing: How much to spend on marketing. Premature scaling of marketing and product development efforts is a widespread cause of startup failure.

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How Disrupters And Incumbents Respond To Technological Change

The Horizons Tracker

For new entrants, the dilemma revolves around whether a specific niche should be targeted to avoid any reaction from the incumbent, or whether to target the mass market and risk provoking such a reaction from the incumbent. Managing disruption.

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Three Ways Leaders Can Improve Decision Making

Lead Change Blog

The little-known fact is that Nokia had invested USD40 billion into creating a similar style iPhone device with color touchscreens, maps and shopping but the product never hit the shelves as management thought it would not have mass market appeal. How wrong they were. Slow Down To Speed Up.

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The 5 Habits of Mind that Self-Made Billionaires Possess

Leading Blog

Imagine what Atari might have achieved if Steve Jobs had stayed there to develop the first mass market personal computer. The key imperative for management is to differentiate between opportunities that need a Performer and those that need a Producer. Management' People who have started something new.

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Finding the Sweet Spot Between Mass Market and Premium

Harvard Business Review

Persuading consumers to pay more for a product by introducing some kind of “premium” element into it has always been a challenging task—but it was one that big, established brands had managed with a reasonable amount of success until recent years. One response by established brands has been to acquire smaller companies.

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It’s Time To Stop VCs Driving Entrepreneurship

The Horizons Tracker

The problem is, Zoom is relatively rare among the unicorn herd, as of the 73 unicorns that have gone public, just six of them have managed to make any kind of profit, with many instead posting huge losses. It runs the risk that startups targeting niche problems get crowded out in favor of those forced to chase mass market problems.

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The $2,000 Car

Harvard Business Review

Increasingly, Western companies are developing products in countries like China and India, and then distributing them globally. For example, GE developed an ultra-low-cost ultrasound for rural China which is now marketed in over 100 countries. They take a "market-back" perspective.