The Third Dimension

Over the past decades, companies have tried to develop a competitive advantage through a cleverly cooked strategy and/or a deep focus on functional excellence. However, this approach has shown weaknesses in two areas:

  • Wastefulness and lack of measure: Too much effort/money/resources have been dedicated to pushing functional excellence in one topic further and in many instances possibly too far. Examples are

    • Companies running cost reduction wave after cost reduction wave do not recognize that the real issue is the lack of appeal of their products.

    • Engineering-driven companies perform miracles but fail to market them appropriately.

    • Consumer goods companies develop innovative new brands but keep all their merchandizing and ...

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