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” […].

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Blog Marketing Levitt Christensen 36

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

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Blog Books Review Levitt 16

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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Simon Blog Airlines Banking 30

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

Telecommunications 23

Telecommunications Marketing Airlines Productivity 23

First Friday Book Synopsis

APRIL 30, 2011

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.

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Blog Edvinsson Levitt Taylor 30

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 […].

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Drucker Tools Review Innovation 9

Execupundit

MAY 29, 2011

In New York magazine , Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt talks about his new venture: a speakers bureau with an audience of one

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Levitt Audience Magazine 11

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.

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Levitt Godin Airlines Customer Loyalty 61

Execupundit

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

Theodore Levitt The future belongs to people who see possibilities before they become obvious.

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Levitt 2

Execupundit

APRIL 17, 2017

Theodore LevittThere is no such thing as the right way for a manager to operate or behave. There are only ways that are appropriate for specific tasks in specific enterprises under specific conditions.

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Levitt Operations Management 2

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

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Levitt Review Incentives Analysis 2

Execupundit

JUNE 14, 2014

Theodore Levitt Marketing is not just a business function. It is a consolidating view of the entire business process.

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Levitt Marketing Process 2

Execupundit

NOVEMBER 12, 2014

Steven Levitt Business people, especially in front of their bosses, have an almost unlimited ability to sit back and mint answers they don''t know.

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Levitt 2

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.

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Levitt Airlines Advertising Reputation 39

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 [.].

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Aaker Levitt Christensen Brand 2

Harvard Business Review

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). ” As Levitt used to tell his students, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. Paul Garbett for HBR.

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Levitt Strategy Article Transportation 6

Execupundit

MARCH 5, 2013

Theodore LevittIt can be said with confident certainty that wherever the articulate and persuasive rationalizer for constantly or frequently poor performance regularly shows up, the company will surely slow down and go under.

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Levitt Company 2

Execupundit

MAY 23, 2013

Theodore Levitt In truth, there is no such thing as a growth industry. There are only companies organized and operated to create and capitalize on growth opportunities. Industries that assume themselves to be riding some automatic growth escalator invariably descend into stagnation.

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Levitt Industry Operations Company 2

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?

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Kaplan Business Model Levitt Christensen 40

Orrin Woodward

MARCH 8, 2011

Theodore Levitt says, “Discretion is the enemy of order, standardization, and quality.” Here is a portion of an article on Systematic Thinking, a key tool in a leader's arsenal. The full article is available on the TEAM site.

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Senge Kaizen Levitt System 37

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?” 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.

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Levitt Article Agility Development 9

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.

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Levitt Innovation Strategy Christensen 8

Execupundit

JANUARY 18, 2012

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker Leaders by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus Thinking About Management by Theodore Levitt Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Wooden On Leadership by John Wooden and Steve Jameson Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson Parkinson's Law by C. I've been asked of provide a list of books that I'd recommend for managers.

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Waterman Levitt Drucker Execution 2

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.

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Innovation Christensen Article Levitt 12

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?” Aggravated and depressed by the decline of their core memory business in the 1980s, Intel’s top management struggled for strategic clarity.

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Strategy Levitt Article Disaggregation 6

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?”

Strategy 12

Strategy Levitt Development Real Estate 12

Harvard Business Review

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.

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Information Technology Information Technology Strategy 3

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.

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Motivation Incentives Levitt Drucker 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 15, 2015

As HBS’s Ted Levitt pointed out decades ago, people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want something that will make a quarter-inch hole. Kenneth Andersson FOR HBR.

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Article Levitt Tools Film 11

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2015

Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison did not invent the lightbulb. Twenty or so inventors and labs had already come up with similar designs when he patented his in 1879. What Edison really invented was affordable and accessible electric light.

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Levitt Energy System Automotive 12

Harvard Business Review

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.

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Innovation Article Levitt Video 4

Harvard Business Review

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.

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Article Levitt Real Estate PR 4

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.

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Marketing Levitt Uncertainty Efficiency 3

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 21, 2014

Decades ago, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt popularized the rationale behind why people buy quarter-inch drill bits: “People don’t want quarter-inch bits. Recently, Procter & Gamble’s Oral-B announced the release of its first ever web-enabled toothbrush. Setting a new standard for dental hygiene, the next SmartSeries toothbrush will include a smartphone app, helping users to know if they are brushing too hard or if it’s time to brush another area of their mouth.

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Productivity Products Innovation Levitt 7

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 26, 2014

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner note that most street-level drug dealers earn modest wages at best — they may neglect their schoolwork, and some take straight jobs in addition to make ends meet. With the virtual disappearance of major white-collar employers like Eastman Kodak and Westinghouse — once fairly reliable career on-ramps — young talent is focusing on entrepreneurship as a path forward.

Industry 7

Industry Education Planning Career 7

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.,

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Levitt Technology Franchising Wireless 1

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 31, 2014

There are some classics out there, such as Peter Drucker’s (“If we weren’t already doing it this way, is this the way we would start?”), Ted Levitt’s timeless contribution (“What business are we really in?”), and the question Andy Grove asked to transform Intel (“If the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?”).

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Strategy Levitt Airlines McKinsey 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 6, 2014

The classic example, attributed to HBS professor Ted Levitt, is that people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want something that will make a quarter-inch hole.

Innovation 11

Innovation Strategy Levitt Disruptive Innovation 11

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 26, 2015

With apologies to Ted Levitt , a new “Marketing Myopia 2.0” While working with a huge Russian hydrocarbon company in Texas last year, our innovation conversation quickly zeroed in on customers. Who was the energy giant’s most important customer?

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Innovation Tourism Levitt Disruptive Innovation 5

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 12, 2013

The approach echoes Ted Levitt''s famous comment about selling ¼ inch holes rather than ¼ inch electric drills, and advocates a mindset shift away from selling products to "doing jobs" that solve customers'' problems. Her confession was blurted out in the midst of our first conversation about the new digital marketing strategy which we would eventually advise them on: "You know, I don''t think I believe in segmentation anymore."

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Marketing Ramaswamy Levitt Prahalad 6