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Customer-driven Disruption: Five Strategies to Stay Ahead of the Curve
Businesses worry about new technologies, but customers are the ultimate disruptors—Suman Sarkar offers bold strategies for making sure you understand your customers and keep up with their ever-changing needs.
Disruption—the brutal roiling of markets, the decline of long-established brands and products, and the rise of new upstarts—drives business failure and success. Most people think technology causes disruption, but technology merely enables it. Changing customer needs cause disruptions, and too many businesses get caught unaware.
Suman Sarkar offers proven strategies that will enable any business to stay radically close to its customers and address their evolving needs. He argues that businesses need to focus on existing customers first—research shows they're likely to spend more and are more profitable than new customers. Personalization is becoming important for the newer generations in both developed and developing markets, so Sarkar describes approaches to make them cost-effective. In our era of instant gratification, customers want what they want now—Sarkar explains how you can develop and deliver products and services faster than ever. And since a few bad Yelp reviews, social media posts, or angry tweets from customers can ruin you, Sarkar shows how to proactively make sure the quality of your products and services stays better than that of your competitors.
The key to survival in this era of changing customer needs is to focus on and address them quickly so customers don't switch to the competition. Drawing on his experiences with leading companies worldwide, Sarkar offers five strategies and techniques that will keep you ahead of the curve.
Disruption—the brutal roiling of markets, the decline of long-established brands and products, and the rise of new upstarts—drives business failure and success. Most people think technology causes disruption, but technology merely enables it. Changing customer needs cause disruptions, and too many businesses get caught unaware.
Suman Sarkar offers proven strategies that will enable any business to stay radically close to its customers and address their evolving needs. He argues that businesses need to focus on existing customers first—research shows they're likely to spend more and are more profitable than new customers. Personalization is becoming important for the newer generations in both developed and developing markets, so Sarkar describes approaches to make them cost-effective. In our era of instant gratification, customers want what they want now—Sarkar explains how you can develop and deliver products and services faster than ever. And since a few bad Yelp reviews, social media posts, or angry tweets from customers can ruin you, Sarkar shows how to proactively make sure the quality of your products and services stays better than that of your competitors.
The key to survival in this era of changing customer needs is to focus on and address them quickly so customers don't switch to the competition. Drawing on his experiences with leading companies worldwide, Sarkar offers five strategies and techniques that will keep you ahead of the curve.
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Published September 3, 2019
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September 6, 2019
When Suman asked me to read his book (which he graciously supplied) about disruption and customer facing strategies. I was very excited. My master's degree is in Innovation Sciences and I have read just about every book on the market on disruption. Furthermore, I'm certified in Six Sigma, Lean, and Agile. So, I'm living and breathing these topics daily, while I'm at work.
If you are new to these topics, which I suspect there are a great deal of business leaders are, this book is perfect for them. It introduces the ideas of Disruption, Customer Centricity, and Customer Driven Disruption very nicely. He builds an incredibly strong case to invest in more customer centricty and the risks of not doing so.
Furthermore, there are a number of strategies recommended that a leader could undertake. It clearly explains the strategy. It explains what results you could reap by following that strategy. Some of them are very near and dear to my heart (Quality and Service). However, this book does not get very deep in the nuts and bolts of executing on these strategies.
There are definitely a number of cases of specifics, like building customer centric teams or performing a 360 triangulation which is a big part of Lean supply chain and one of the reasons Toyota was so successful. I think this book would have gone from a good book to a great book, if Suman had included a number of reference books and techniques with more of the HOW.
I understand that the Author manages a consultancy and part of writing a book like this is advertising for his firm. Which I would expect can provide very clearly the how of doing everything. Including more case studies and historic approaches of addressing supply chain issues (he could have even touted his own book more!). I would expec there will be a number of people that read this book and end up frustrated with the lack implementation guidance.
That said, the optimism and excitment about the topic, made for enjoyable reading. If you are interested in some books that might adddress the HOW in more detail, I've reviewed a number of those books, so check my other reviews. If you want a fantastic survey of the ideas and best strategies for implenting Customer Centric Innovation, start here and when you get to the end, you'll start digging for more.
If you are new to these topics, which I suspect there are a great deal of business leaders are, this book is perfect for them. It introduces the ideas of Disruption, Customer Centricity, and Customer Driven Disruption very nicely. He builds an incredibly strong case to invest in more customer centricty and the risks of not doing so.
Furthermore, there are a number of strategies recommended that a leader could undertake. It clearly explains the strategy. It explains what results you could reap by following that strategy. Some of them are very near and dear to my heart (Quality and Service). However, this book does not get very deep in the nuts and bolts of executing on these strategies.
There are definitely a number of cases of specifics, like building customer centric teams or performing a 360 triangulation which is a big part of Lean supply chain and one of the reasons Toyota was so successful. I think this book would have gone from a good book to a great book, if Suman had included a number of reference books and techniques with more of the HOW.
I understand that the Author manages a consultancy and part of writing a book like this is advertising for his firm. Which I would expect can provide very clearly the how of doing everything. Including more case studies and historic approaches of addressing supply chain issues (he could have even touted his own book more!). I would expec there will be a number of people that read this book and end up frustrated with the lack implementation guidance.
That said, the optimism and excitment about the topic, made for enjoyable reading. If you are interested in some books that might adddress the HOW in more detail, I've reviewed a number of those books, so check my other reviews. If you want a fantastic survey of the ideas and best strategies for implenting Customer Centric Innovation, start here and when you get to the end, you'll start digging for more.
Displaying 1 of 1 review