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Theodore Levitt's classic theory -- in under two minutes. Dave Wheeler for HBR. The starting point of most competitive analysis is a question: Who is your competition? That’s because most companies view their competition as another brand, product, or service. But smart leaders and organizations go broader. The question is not who your competition is but what it is. MORE
There certainly is no shortage of candidates from our nine decades of publishing — from Ted Levitt's "Marketing Myopia" to Michael Porter's "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.". Harvard Business Review was launched precisely 90 years ago this month with an ambitious agenda — to produce a "business theory," based on rigorous research, to help managers run their companies more effectively. MORE
Levitt and Stephen J. The holidays are almost here and you may be scrambling to find a last minute gift for those on your list, or simply anticipating a bit of a break where you can rest, enjoy family, and rejuvenate yourself for the new year. Why not share the gift of a great book – or take the time to read one for yourself. Go ahead, you deserve it! MORE
It serves as a great introduction to other works by modern writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Levitt, who translate theories from the social and physical sciences into everyday life. Recently, I wrote that leaders should be readers. Reading has a host of benefits for those who wish to occupy positions of leadership and develop into more relaxed, empathetic, and well-rounded people. One of the most common follow-up questions was, "Ok, so what should I read?". That's a tough question. MORE
The Marketing Imagination (Expanded Edition) Theodore Levitt Free Press (1986) Do not be misled by the date of this Expanded Edition: Of the more than 27 gazillion books on marketing now in print, none has had a greater impact than has this one. It is truly a masterpiece. By way of background, in 1960 (in [.]. MORE
Levitt and. Levitt and Stephen J. Evaluation & Control Program Recommended Resources book review business book business management evaluation and control freakonomics Stephen Dubner Steven Levitt strategydriven Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. by Steven D. Stephen J. Dubner. About the Book. Freakonomics by Steven D. MORE
Saul quotes Theodore Levitt (Harvard Business School Professor), “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” Quick, tell me your organization’s business model. Can you? Can you tell me what a business model is? Oh, it’s how we make money! Therein lies the problem. It’s a lot more than just making money – making money is the output, not even the outcome, let alone the model. MORE
Some fifteen years ago, in a period that seemed full of change and uncertainty in marketing, I asked my colleague Ted Levitt where he saw our field heading. Levitt, who had a marvelous talent for speaking in epigrams, responded, "The future of marketing will be more like its past than anyone imagines." Today, as the internet, social media, new analytics, and mobile devices upend the work of marketing, it may seem strange to say he was right. MORE
Many years ago I read Theodore Levitt’s The Marketing Imagination. Branding Leadership Marketing Strategy Advertising Consurmer Packaged Goods Social Media Theodore Levitt Vision In the book, the renowned marketing professor said there was no such thing as a commodity, only people who think like commodities. Suddenly, a light went on in the corner of my mind. After that, as a matter of principle, I stopped using the “C” word. This served me well as a branded coffee marketer. MORE
A team of economic researchers led by Harvard University’s Roland Fryer (and including Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame) recently flipped the incentive model on its head and tested on one of the most incentive-resistant professions in America: schoolteachers. Incentives have been with us for a long time. As a tool drive performance, there is nearly 100 years of solid argument for their use in organizations. More recently, however, their use has been called into question. MORE
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. Levitt argued that it's always better to define a business by what consumers want than by what a company can produce. What Business Are We In? MORE
In the classic HBR article “Marketing Myopia, ” Theodore Levitt asked a provocative question: “What business are you really in?” Today, a firm without application program interfaces (APIs) that allow software programs to interact with each other is like the internet without the World Wide Web. MORE
The marketing orientation focuses the purpose of the firm towards serving customer needs profitably – an orientation supported by the late greats Peter Drucker and Theodore Levitt. Our understanding of pricing has come a long way since 1890 when Alfred Marshall published his treatise on the economic scissors of supply and demand. Pricing is no longer a purely economic challenge to be addressed through studies of market elasticity. MORE
View my complete profile Previous Posts The First 30 Days as CEO The Laws of Charisma Jim's Longevity Diet Broth The Next Level Book Review The Intangibles of Leadership Conscientious Equity Book Report Nando Parrado and James Cameron Blue Ocean Strategy Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Al Gore Steven Levitt - Freakonomics Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. MORE
Alan M. Webber is an award-winning, nationally-recognized editor, author, and columnist. In 1995, he launched Fast Company magazine, a fresh, dynamic entry in the business magazine category. Headquartered in Boston, MA, the magazine became the fastest growing, most successful business magazine in history. Fast Company won two national magazine awards—one for general excellence, one for [.]. Bob's blog entries "Business As War" "global detective” Alan M. MORE
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. Through the past 15 years my colleagues and I have wrestled with disruption in many contexts. That’s no surprise, since Clayton Christensen co-founded our company in 2000, five years after his Harvard Business Review article with Joseph L. MORE
The term was coined by the late Harvard Business School marketing professor, Theodore Levitt, in a 1960 article by the same name (republished in 2004). The “heart of the article,” according to Deighton, is Levitt’s argument that companies are too focused on producing goods or services and don’t spend enough time understanding what customers want or need. ” As Levitt used to tell his students, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. MORE
It's hard to overestimate the influence Ted Levitt's "Marketing Myopia" has had on the world of marketing and beyond. Like Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence in literary criticism or Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things in product design, Levitt's half-century-old treatise on examining what business your company is really in hovers over and continues to influence entire schools of thought. This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Marketing That Works. MORE
Steve Levitt - Author of Freakanomics and Super Freakanomics , Steve was superb. MORE
Michael Levitt, CEO of BreakfastLeadership.com. Becoming A Healthy Leader There are plenty of ways to become a healthy leader. I’ve shared various ways you can become a healthy leader over the last couple of weeks. Today, I wanted to bring new voices to the civanonversation on what a healthy leader looks like. To do this, I reached out to leaders I admire and respect. Photo by Element5 Digital. MORE
Revised and Expanded Edition): How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World Theodore Levitt HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing HBR Editors and various contributors Harvard Busxiness Review Press (2013) How the right strategy can help create or increase demand for whatever is offered This is one in a series of volumes that anthologizes what the editors of the Harvard Business Review consider to be the “must reads” […]. MORE
Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner William Morrow/An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers (2014) How and why mastering the economic approach will produce better answers to questions and better solutions to problems In their latest book, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner cite […]. Levitt The Book The conventional wisdom is often wrong The Gambler Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Van Halen group William Morrow/An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Zappos MORE
Consider another example made famous in Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. Upton Sinclair once wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon him not understanding it." If your business objectives aren't linked to employee compensation, it sends a strong message that they aren't a real priority, and motivation is adversely affected. The flip-side, however, isn't true. MORE
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.” Most data-driven healthcare IT (HCIT) providers aren’t going to survive. Their business models are at serious risk of failure in the next three to five years. To beat those odds, they need to evolve dramatically, and fast, to a point where they are not selling data at all. MORE
” The books Chip has found most helpful for his professional life include Watership Down by Richard Adams, Marketing for Business Growth by Ted Levitt, and The Purple Cow by Seth Godin. MORE
Martin Seth Godin Steve Jobs Steve Steinhilber strategic alliances The Complete Guide to Mergers and Acquisitions The Effective Executive Execution The Executive’s Compass The Marketing Imagination The Opposable Mind Theodore Levitt Thomas Edison Thomas Watson Sr. MORE
More generally, the results affirm that applying behavioral insights has great potential for increasing economic and individual well-being at low cost, as the recent work of Daniel Kahneman, Steven Levitt, Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, and others has shown. Ryan McVay/Getty Images. With U.S. household credit card debt at an all-time high of more than $1 trillion , delinquent payments can be more costly than ever. MORE
In their hit book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner posit that real estate agents don't have the incentive to push for the highest sales price for homeowners. Levitt and Dubner bolster their claim by citing research that reveals when realtors sell their own homes, they remain on the market one week longer and sell for 3% more. MORE
Grove’s 1980 question remains as ruthlessly relevant to C-suites as Ted Levitt’s 1960 classic, “What business are you in?” So contemporary versions of these boardroom queries by Grove, Moore, and Levitt sound almost accusatory: How could we create twice as much value for twice as many customers with only half as many employees? MORE
My friend Michelle Miller-Levitt was on the panel. Guest post by Roger L. Firestien, PhD : I’d bet you a hundred dollars that you don’t get your best ideas at work. Most people in my seminars and classes tell me that they get their best ideas while driving a car, exercising, taking a bath or shower, or as they fall asleep at night. At work, most of us are in implementation mode. Action mode. Make-it-happen mode. MORE
Theodore Levitt's classic theory -- in under two minutes. Twenty five years ago Steve Hughes, now the CEO of Sunrise Strategic Partners, was walking through an orange juice plant when he had an epiphany that turned into a $500 million business. Hughes had just become executive vice-president of Tropicana, and he was touring facilities to try to learn about the business. He was in a plant and noticed some of the workers on a break. MORE
When Nobel Laureate, Michael Levitt, first analyzed Chinese infection rates, he tracked an increase of 30% per day in Hubei province. As Heather and I work from, and stay home, to be part of the solution, I found myself gorging on way too much negative news. As my sleep and mood deteriorated, I went looking for an antidote to the pessimism plague. I began a search for reasons to be optimistic. One of the first articles I came across was at Human Progress by Chelsea Follott. MORE
Dick Remember to Breathe Saint Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13:12 Simon Pont: An interview by Bob Morris Steven Levitt Super-Toys Last All Summer Long Tao Te Ching the “300 pound digital goliath” The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom The Princess Bride Tom Davenport Vizeum Voltaire William GoldmanSimon Pont is a writer, commentator and brand-builder. MORE
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?” Which brings us to something else Theodore Levitt said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” Jennifer Maravillas for HBR. MORE
In January 1980, Harvard's Ted Levitt wrote an article titled " Marketing Success Through Differentiation of Anything." Levitt argued that products were more complicated to consumers than most manufacturers considered. Levitt asserted that companies could differentiate themselves — to a limited degree — by providing a variety of expected features to the consumer (i.e., MORE
Maybe it's a good time to dredge up a chestnut from Ted Levitt's classic HBR article, "Marketing Myopia." Levitt analyzed the fall of the railroads, and notes that the railroads "assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. Charles Dickens was killing it in 1842. MORE
Thursday September 15th, 2011: The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs today announced the shortlist for the seventh annual Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award (www.ft.com/bookaward), which aims to identify the book providing the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues. The shortlist is: [.]. MORE
Rust Scott Cook Suj Krishnaswamy Susan Fournier Taddy Hall The Marketing Imagination Theodore LevittHarvard Business Review on Reinventing Your Marketing Various Contributors Harvard Business Review Press (2011) How to use innovative thinking to improve how you create or increase demand for what you offer Those who aspire to maximize the impact of their marketing initiatives will find the material in this HBR book invaluable. It is one of [.]. MORE
” These words of Harvard professor and marketing guru Ted Levitt were written about customers. He was the CEO of one of the most innovative service companies on the planet. I asked him to write an endorsement for my new book, and used the encounter to learn more about how he created such an amazing culture. He did not hesitate with his answer: “Trust!”. MORE
In 1960, marketing legend Ted Levitt provided perhaps his seminal contribution to the Harvard Business Review : “ Marketing Myopia.” To avoid that, Levitt exhorted leaders to ask themselves the seemingly obvious question – “What business are you really in?” Levitt agreed, noting that the trouble starts when over time companies come to define themselves not by what they do for customers but by the products they sell or the categories in which they compete. MORE
Karl Ronn is the managing director of Innovation Portfolio Partners. Based in Palo Alto, he helps Fortune 500 companies create new businesses or helps entrepreneurs start category creating new companies. He is a co-founder of VC-backed Butterfly Health that sells Butterfly body liners nationally. He is also developing a software company building diagnostic competency for […]. MORE
In Theodore Levitt’s The Marketing Imagination , the renowned marketing professor said there was no such thing as a commodity, only people who think like commodities. Differentiation is still the name of the marketing game. Distinction in service, image and promise allows a brand to occupy a piece of a customer’s busy mind. More importantly, differentiation is the brand’s raison d’être, its reason for being that causes customers to think of it when they are ready to shop. MORE
As Theodore Levitt , the great former-Harvard marketing professor and editor of HBR, once put it , “Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and finally consuming it.”In paul garbett FOR HBR. For decades, Sales and Academia remained worlds apart and the business world did fine. MORE
Levitt and Dubner, they of Freakonomics, offer a slightly more sophomoric example when they point out that the "average" adult in a global sample has one breast and one testicle. There's no such thing as an average customer. A Harvard Business School marketing professor named John Deighton once came up with a vivid analogy to illustrate this and show why a business should sub-segment its customer base. MORE
Levitt Related Topics Joseph Lalonde
MARCH 14, 2018
Michael Levitt, CEO of BreakfastLeadership.com. Becoming A Healthy Leader There are plenty of ways to become a healthy leader. I’ve shared various ways you can become a healthy leader over the last couple of weeks. Today, I wanted to bring new voices to the civanonversation on what a healthy leader looks like. To do this, I reached out to leaders I admire and respect. Photo by Element5 Digital.
In the CEO Afterlife
JULY 2, 2013
Many years ago I read Theodore Levitt’s The Marketing Imagination. Branding Leadership Marketing Strategy Advertising Consurmer Packaged Goods Social Media Theodore Levitt Vision In the book, the renowned marketing professor said there was no such thing as a commodity, only people who think like commodities. Suddenly, a light went on in the corner of my mind. After that, as a matter of principle, I stopped using the “C” word. This served me well as a branded coffee marketer.
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First Friday Book Synopsis
JUNE 8, 2014
Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner William Morrow/An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers (2014) How and why mastering the economic approach will produce better answers to questions and better solutions to problems In their latest book, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner cite […]. Levitt The Book The conventional wisdom is often wrong The Gambler Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Van Halen group William Morrow/An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Zappos
First Friday Book Synopsis
NOVEMBER 26, 2014
Karl Ronn is the managing director of Innovation Portfolio Partners. Based in Palo Alto, he helps Fortune 500 companies create new businesses or helps entrepreneurs start category creating new companies. He is a co-founder of VC-backed Butterfly Health that sells Butterfly body liners nationally. He is also developing a software company building diagnostic competency for […].
First Friday Book Synopsis
MAY 16, 2013
Revised and Expanded Edition): How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World Theodore Levitt HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing HBR Editors and various contributors Harvard Busxiness Review Press (2013) How the right strategy can help create or increase demand for whatever is offered This is one in a series of volumes that anthologizes what the editors of the Harvard Business Review consider to be the “must reads” […].
First Friday Book Synopsis
MARCH 4, 2011
The Marketing Imagination (Expanded Edition) Theodore Levitt Free Press (1986) Do not be misled by the date of this Expanded Edition: Of the more than 27 gazillion books on marketing now in print, none has had a greater impact than has this one. It is truly a masterpiece. By way of background, in 1960 (in [.].
First Friday Book Synopsis
JANUARY 30, 2013
Dick Remember to Breathe Saint Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13:12 Simon Pont: An interview by Bob Morris Steven Levitt Super-Toys Last All Summer Long Tao Te Ching the “300 pound digital goliath” The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom The Princess Bride Tom Davenport Vizeum Voltaire William GoldmanSimon Pont is a writer, commentator and brand-builder.
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First Friday Book Synopsis
SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
Thursday September 15th, 2011: The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs today announced the shortlist for the seventh annual Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award (www.ft.com/bookaward), which aims to identify the book providing the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues. The shortlist is: [.].
First Friday Book Synopsis
OCTOBER 3, 2011
Rust Scott Cook Suj Krishnaswamy Susan Fournier Taddy Hall The Marketing Imagination Theodore LevittHarvard Business Review on Reinventing Your Marketing Various Contributors Harvard Business Review Press (2011) How to use innovative thinking to improve how you create or increase demand for what you offer Those who aspire to maximize the impact of their marketing initiatives will find the material in this HBR book invaluable. It is one of [.].
First Friday Book Synopsis
MARCH 2, 2011
Martin Seth Godin Steve Jobs Steve Steinhilber strategic alliances The Complete Guide to Mergers and Acquisitions The Effective Executive Execution The Executive’s Compass The Marketing Imagination The Opposable Mind Theodore Levitt Thomas Edison Thomas Watson Sr.
Strategy Driven
JUNE 6, 2013
Levitt and. Levitt and Stephen J. Evaluation & Control Program Recommended Resources book review business book business management evaluation and control freakonomics Stephen Dubner Steven Levitt strategydriven Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. by Steven D. Stephen J. Dubner. About the Book. Freakonomics by Steven D.
Great Leadership By Dan
NOVEMBER 14, 2019
My friend Michelle Miller-Levitt was on the panel. Guest post by Roger L. Firestien, PhD : I’d bet you a hundred dollars that you don’t get your best ideas at work. Most people in my seminars and classes tell me that they get their best ideas while driving a car, exercising, taking a bath or shower, or as they fall asleep at night. At work, most of us are in implementation mode. Action mode. Make-it-happen mode.
Lead Change Blog
JANUARY 28, 2019
” These words of Harvard professor and marketing guru Ted Levitt were written about customers. He was the CEO of one of the most innovative service companies on the planet. I asked him to write an endorsement for my new book, and used the encounter to learn more about how he created such an amazing culture. He did not hesitate with his answer: “Trust!”.
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Lead Change Blog
APRIL 1, 2016
” The books Chip has found most helpful for his professional life include Watership Down by Richard Adams, Marketing for Business Growth by Ted Levitt, and The Purple Cow by Seth Godin.
In the CEO Afterlife
AUGUST 5, 2015
In Theodore Levitt’s The Marketing Imagination , the renowned marketing professor said there was no such thing as a commodity, only people who think like commodities. Differentiation is still the name of the marketing game. Distinction in service, image and promise allows a brand to occupy a piece of a customer’s busy mind. More importantly, differentiation is the brand’s raison d’être, its reason for being that causes customers to think of it when they are ready to shop.
The Practical Leader
MARCH 25, 2020
When Nobel Laureate, Michael Levitt, first analyzed Chinese infection rates, he tracked an increase of 30% per day in Hubei province. As Heather and I work from, and stay home, to be part of the solution, I found myself gorging on way too much negative news. As my sleep and mood deteriorated, I went looking for an antidote to the pessimism plague. I began a search for reasons to be optimistic. One of the first articles I came across was at Human Progress by Chelsea Follott.
Harvard Business
AUGUST 22, 2016
The term was coined by the late Harvard Business School marketing professor, Theodore Levitt, in a 1960 article by the same name (republished in 2004). The “heart of the article,” according to Deighton, is Levitt’s argument that companies are too focused on producing goods or services and don’t spend enough time understanding what customers want or need. ” As Levitt used to tell his students, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill.
CEO Blog
NOVEMBER 11, 2010
View my complete profile Previous Posts The First 30 Days as CEO The Laws of Charisma Jim's Longevity Diet Broth The Next Level Book Review The Intangibles of Leadership Conscientious Equity Book Report Nando Parrado and James Cameron Blue Ocean Strategy Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Al Gore Steven Levitt - Freakonomics Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site.
LDRLB
AUGUST 13, 2012
A team of economic researchers led by Harvard University’s Roland Fryer (and including Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame) recently flipped the incentive model on its head and tested on one of the most incentive-resistant professions in America: schoolteachers. Incentives have been with us for a long time. As a tool drive performance, there is nearly 100 years of solid argument for their use in organizations. More recently, however, their use has been called into question.
Reality-Based Leadership
DECEMBER 13, 2016
Levitt and Stephen J. The holidays are almost here and you may be scrambling to find a last minute gift for those on your list, or simply anticipating a bit of a break where you can rest, enjoy family, and rejuvenate yourself for the new year. Why not share the gift of a great book – or take the time to read one for yourself. Go ahead, you deserve it!
Mills Scofield
APRIL 15, 2012
Saul quotes Theodore Levitt (Harvard Business School Professor), “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” Quick, tell me your organization’s business model. Can you? Can you tell me what a business model is? Oh, it’s how we make money! Therein lies the problem. It’s a lot more than just making money – making money is the output, not even the outcome, let alone the model.
N2Growth Blog
OCTOBER 7, 2010
Steve Levitt - Author of Freakanomics and Super Freakanomics , Steve was superb.
Harvard Business
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?” Which brings us to something else Theodore Levitt said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” Jennifer Maravillas for HBR.
Harvard Business Review
JULY 11, 2011
It's hard to overestimate the influence Ted Levitt's "Marketing Myopia" has had on the world of marketing and beyond. Like Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence in literary criticism or Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things in product design, Levitt's half-century-old treatise on examining what business your company is really in hovers over and continues to influence entire schools of thought. This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Marketing That Works.
Harvard Business
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?” So contemporary versions of these boardroom queries by Grove, Moore, and Levitt sound almost accusatory: How could we create twice as much value for twice as many customers with only half as many employees?
Harvard Business
MAY 11, 2017
Theodore Levitt's classic theory -- in under two minutes. Dave Wheeler for HBR. The starting point of most competitive analysis is a question: Who is your competition? That’s because most companies view their competition as another brand, product, or service. But smart leaders and organizations go broader. The question is not who your competition is but what it is.
Harvard Business
JULY 26, 2018
More generally, the results affirm that applying behavioral insights has great potential for increasing economic and individual well-being at low cost, as the recent work of Daniel Kahneman, Steven Levitt, Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, and others has shown. Ryan McVay/Getty Images. With U.S. household credit card debt at an all-time high of more than $1 trillion , delinquent payments can be more costly than ever.
Harvard Business
APRIL 13, 2017
Theodore Levitt's classic theory -- in under two minutes. Twenty five years ago Steve Hughes, now the CEO of Sunrise Strategic Partners, was walking through an orange juice plant when he had an epiphany that turned into a $500 million business. Hughes had just become executive vice-president of Tropicana, and he was touring facilities to try to learn about the business. He was in a plant and noticed some of the workers on a break.
Harvard Business
JUNE 14, 2017
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.” Most data-driven healthcare IT (HCIT) providers aren’t going to survive. Their business models are at serious risk of failure in the next three to five years. To beat those odds, they need to evolve dramatically, and fast, to a point where they are not selling data at all.
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 3, 2011
In January 1980, Harvard's Ted Levitt wrote an article titled " Marketing Success Through Differentiation of Anything." Levitt argued that products were more complicated to consumers than most manufacturers considered. Levitt asserted that companies could differentiate themselves — to a limited degree — by providing a variety of expected features to the consumer (i.e.,
Strategy Driven
MARCH 30, 2011
The marketing orientation focuses the purpose of the firm towards serving customer needs profitably – an orientation supported by the late greats Peter Drucker and Theodore Levitt. Our understanding of pricing has come a long way since 1890 when Alfred Marshall published his treatise on the economic scissors of supply and demand. Pricing is no longer a purely economic challenge to be addressed through studies of market elasticity.
Harvard Business Review
JANUARY 13, 2014
In 1960, marketing legend Ted Levitt provided perhaps his seminal contribution to the Harvard Business Review : “ Marketing Myopia.” To avoid that, Levitt exhorted leaders to ask themselves the seemingly obvious question – “What business are you really in?” Levitt agreed, noting that the trouble starts when over time companies come to define themselves not by what they do for customers but by the products they sell or the categories in which they compete.
Harvard Business Review
NOVEMBER 29, 2011
Some fifteen years ago, in a period that seemed full of change and uncertainty in marketing, I asked my colleague Ted Levitt where he saw our field heading. Levitt, who had a marvelous talent for speaking in epigrams, responded, "The future of marketing will be more like its past than anyone imagines." Today, as the internet, social media, new analytics, and mobile devices upend the work of marketing, it may seem strange to say he was right.
Harvard Business
APRIL 26, 2016
As Theodore Levitt , the great former-Harvard marketing professor and editor of HBR, once put it , “Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and finally consuming it.”In paul garbett FOR HBR. For decades, Sales and Academia remained worlds apart and the business world did fine.
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 16, 2012
There certainly is no shortage of candidates from our nine decades of publishing — from Ted Levitt's "Marketing Myopia" to Michael Porter's "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.". Harvard Business Review was launched precisely 90 years ago this month with an ambitious agenda — to produce a "business theory," based on rigorous research, to help managers run their companies more effectively.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 1, 2011
Maybe it's a good time to dredge up a chestnut from Ted Levitt's classic HBR article, "Marketing Myopia." Levitt analyzed the fall of the railroads, and notes that the railroads "assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. Charles Dickens was killing it in 1842.
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 10, 2011
In their hit book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner posit that real estate agents don't have the incentive to push for the highest sales price for homeowners. Levitt and Dubner bolster their claim by citing research that reveals when realtors sell their own homes, they remain on the market one week longer and sell for 3% more.
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. Levitt argued that it's always better to define a business by what consumers want than by what a company can produce. What Business Are We In?
Harvard Business Review
DECEMBER 28, 2010
Levitt and Dubner, they of Freakonomics, offer a slightly more sophomoric example when they point out that the "average" adult in a global sample has one breast and one testicle. There's no such thing as an average customer. A Harvard Business School marketing professor named John Deighton once came up with a vivid analogy to illustrate this and show why a business should sub-segment its customer base.
Harvard Business Review
NOVEMBER 18, 2015
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. Through the past 15 years my colleagues and I have wrestled with disruption in many contexts. That’s no surprise, since Clayton Christensen co-founded our company in 2000, five years after his Harvard Business Review article with Joseph L.
Harvard Business Review
SEPTEMBER 18, 2012
Consider another example made famous in Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. Upton Sinclair once wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon him not understanding it." If your business objectives aren't linked to employee compensation, it sends a strong message that they aren't a real priority, and motivation is adversely affected. The flip-side, however, isn't true.
Harvard Business Review
OCTOBER 11, 2012
It serves as a great introduction to other works by modern writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Levitt, who translate theories from the social and physical sciences into everyday life. Recently, I wrote that leaders should be readers. Reading has a host of benefits for those who wish to occupy positions of leadership and develop into more relaxed, empathetic, and well-rounded people. One of the most common follow-up questions was, "Ok, so what should I read?". That's a tough question.
Harvard Business Review
JANUARY 7, 2015
In the classic HBR article “Marketing Myopia, ” Theodore Levitt asked a provocative question: “What business are you really in?” Today, a firm without application program interfaces (APIs) that allow software programs to interact with each other is like the internet without the World Wide Web.
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