I've been following Saul Kaplan on Twitter for a while. He recently published a post titled "Wanted: Market Makers" that I think captures the spirit of the times, illustrated by Zappos:
Zappos is a market maker. They are defining the standard of customer service for on-line sales. Zappos does not see the local shoe store as the competition and I bet that the local shoe store would say that they are not competing with Zappos.
I added a few words at the end. The key point being that we are entering a new phase of business, as characterized by the style of corporate leadership and corporate culture -- one defined by market making innovation.
This is the Blue Ocean strategy approach. Share takers operate in the red ocean of competition, rather than discover/create a new blue ocean (market). There’s an operational side to share taking that I think is important — the ability to drive to efficiency/effectiveness once the market opens up — and I’ve worked with some great six-sigma trained operations guys/gals from the GE management training program. But it’s my opinion that things may be changing. Neil Fligstein talked about corporate leadership and corporate culture in terms of dominant characteristics of a time period. The period we are exiting, capped off by the current financial mess, is the Financial period, which stretches back to 1970 or so. The question is, what will characterize the new phase? In line with your points in “Wanted: Market Makers” I feel the next phase will be defined by product and service innovation, with innovators in the lead roles, and design a very important tool.
Todd Sundsted
Leave a Reply