Mark W. Johnson > Quotes

“The most important attribute of a customer value proposition is its precision: how perfectly it nails the customer job to be done—and nothing else.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“Companies will almost always need to integrate their key resources and processes in a unique way to get a job done perfectly for a set of customers. When they do, they almost always create enduring competitive advantage.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“Neglect to focus on one job (customer need); they dilute their efforts by attempting to do lots of things. In doing lots of things, they do nothing really well.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“A successful company is one that has found a way to create value for customers—that is, a way to help customers get an important job done. By “job” we mean a fundamental problem in a given situation that needs a solution.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“Truly transformative businesses are never exclusively about the discovery and commercialization of a great technology. Their success comes from enveloping the new technology in an appropriate, powerful business model.

Bob Higgins, the founder and general partner of Highland Capital Partners, has seen his share of venture success and failure in his 20 years in the industry. He sums up the importance and power of business model innovation this way: “I think historically where we [venture capitalists] fail is when we back technology. Where we succeed is when we back new business models.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“For Tata Motors to fulfill the requirements of its customer value proposition and profit formula for the Nano, it had to reconceive how a car is designed, manufactured, and distributed. Tata built a small team of fairly young engineers who would not, like the company’s more-experienced designers, be influenced and constrained in their thinking by the automaker’s existing profit formulas. This team dramatically minimized the number of parts in the vehicle, resulting in a significant cost saving.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“it’s not the individual resources and processes that make the difference but their relationship to one another.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“We recommend companies with new business models be patient for growth (to allow the market opportunity to unfold) but impatient for profit (as an early validation that the model works). A profitable business is the best early indication of a viable model. What Rules, Norms, and Metrics Are Standing in Your Way? In”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“The structure of language determines not only thought but reality itself. —Noam Chomsky”
― Mark W. Johnson, Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal

“The more important the job is to the customer, the lower the level of customer satisfaction with current options for getting the job done, and the better your solution is than existing alternatives at getting the job done (and, of course, the lower the price), the greater the CVP.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“He who moves not forward, goes backward. —Goethe”
― Mark W. Johnson, Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal

“when FedEx entered the package delivery market, it did not try to compete through lower prices or better marketing. Instead, it concentrated on fulfilling an entirely unmet customer need to receive packages far, far faster, and more reliably, than any service then could.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“Business models need to have the flexibility to change in their early years.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“One way to generate a precise customer value proposition is to think about the four most common barriers keeping people from getting particular jobs done: insufficient wealth, access, skill, or time.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“1. The opportunity to address through disruptive innovation the needs of large groups of potential customers who are shut out of a market entirely because existing solutions are too expensive or complicated for them. This includes the opportunity to democratize products in emerging markets (or reach the bottom of the pyramid), as Tata’s Nano does. 2.”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“He sums up the importance and power of business model innovation this way: “I think historically where we [venture capitalists] fail is when we back technology. Where we succeed is when we back new business models.” Originally”
― Mark W. Johnson, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“Where visioning and future-back thinking become truly important for individuals is when the goal is not to predict or reverse-engineer one’s desired future but to understand what those desires really are. You must ask yourself hard, open-ended questions, and pay as much attention to your intuitions and your feelings as you do to your present-forward logic. What do I truly want? What do I truly value? What will be meaningful to me in ten or twenty years? Are the choices I am making compatible with those things?”
― Mark W. Johnson, Lead from the Future: How to Turn Visionary Thinking Into Breakthrough Growth