articles > Implementation
Ten Key Roles of a B-to-B Corporate Marketing Function
Several months ago a senior marketing executive from a global business-to-business corporation shared the following experience: “Over the last year, I have brought three good ideas forward to our company leadership council – each founded on fact-based market research and strong customer insights – and yet these ideas just didn’t get any traction. Each time Read the rest…
Don’t Forget “How”
Recently, I worked with a client that was implementing a new “customer partnering” initiative that provided a valuable learning experience. This firm had set ambitious goals to collaborate with some of their largest customers on new product development projects, hoping to avoid outcomes where the contribution was off the mark, timed inappropriately, or otherwise failed Read the rest…
Implementation Competencies: Creating Long-Term Growth Foundations
A global industrial systems company found that its business environment was shifting rapidly. The firm had experienced market share losses with some customers and had received sharp (and unpleasant) communications from several of this firm’s largest national accounts. This firm’s executives believed that their product quality was superior to that of competitors, and the firm Read the rest…
In-Career Education and Implementation Competencies
Rudy Giuliani once noted that “Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy.” The wisdom in that statement was recently underscored during a webinar I conducted on the topic Best Practices in Strategy Implementation, sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Business Markets[1]. The webinar technology that was used allowed Read the rest…
Ready, Fire, Aim!
George F. Brown, Jr. identifies four themes for business growth in 2012, and offers his unique insight into implementing your New Year resolutions. Businesses are developing ambitious plans to achieve their growth and profit goals for 2012. In conversations with many organizations, I hear of four themes that are included in many of these plans. Read the rest…
Known Unknowns And Unknown Unknowns
A client in the medical equipment industry recently shared the following experience with me: “You might remember about a decade ago the media having a great time with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when he made the comment about ‘known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns’. It’s probably true that politicians have to be careful when Read the rest…
You Know it Ain’t Easy
George F. Brown, Jr, CEO and cofounder of strategy consulting firm Blue Canyon Partners, shares his research on the challenges executives experience in implementing business model changes. We recently worked with a company that manufactures capital equipment used in many factories to make products from plastic and similar materials. Its technology offered many advantages over Read the rest…
Top Five Questions to Ask IT Before a Project Kicks Off
No vendor wants to be the subject of a customer’s long-remembered horror story. Too often, those stories stem from a vendor IT project that goes off the rails and reverberates down the line to become a problem for a client. Here are five questions executives should ask their enterprise IT management teams in order to Read the rest…
