Our Guide to the Fall 2022 Issue
These summaries will help you navigate our fall 2022 lineup.
Topics
Manage Your Customer Portfolio for Maximum Lifetime Value
Fred Selnes and Michael D. Johnson
Key Insight: Having a clear understanding of when and how much to invest in, leverage, and defend different customer relationships is an essential determinant of both current and future revenues and costs.
Top Takeaways: Setting goals regarding how customers are acquired and retained can provide long-term value and requires a clear understanding of the heterogeneity of customer needs and economies of scale as they emerge over time. To inform and act upon this understanding, companies need an integrated approach to customer portfolio management and customer portfolio lifetime value.
Why Innovators in China Stay Close to the Market
Neil C. Thompson, Didier Bonnet, Mark J. Greeven, Wenjing Lyu, and Sarah Jaballah
Key Insight: Chinese companies are about twice as likely as those elsewhere in the world to use customers, competitors, or business unit operational employees as a source of innovation.
Top Takeaways: While most of the world is converging on a common innovation recipe, running it out of centralized innovation groups, China is an exception. Companies there, both domestic and foreign, are much more likely to turn to market-facing sources for innovation, including customers, competitors, and front-line employees. Global companies that want to capture the benefits of being in China need to accept that they have to have a dual model: one for China, and one for the rest of the world.
How Smart Products Create Connected Customers
Mohan Subramaniam
Key Insight: Data acquired from digital customers — those who use smart, connected products — empowers businesses to dramatically expand their value scope.
Top Takeaways: Leaders of companies anchored in traditional value chains can drive growth by transforming their existing customers into digital customers. Digital customers’ interactions generate streams of data that can be used to create fresh revenue and expand the scope of product and service businesses. To achieve this, however, leaders must shift strategic priorities and develop new marketing, business, and revenue- and profit-generation models.
Strategically Engaging With Innovation Ecosystems
Philip Budden and Fiona Murray
Key Insight: A common pitfall for companies looking for new innovation partners is focusing on how to connect before identifying what they need or which ecosystem players to approach.