Chapter 9The Discipline of Solution Leadership
The discipline of solution leadership entails competing not just with better standalone products but with better solutions: product-service systems encompassing “things” connected to cloud-based services; which are customized or customizable to solve customer problems; have virtually unlimited potential via platforms and ecosystems; and that maintain a long-term relationship with the customer rather than being sold in a single transaction, further enabling a joint focus on customer outcomes.
Formerly standalone services are becoming connected to the cloud as well. Consider the difference between the traditional corner pizzeria and today's, where ordering the pizza and selecting toppings can be done online, the restaurants are connected to the ordering system and display gamified performance metrics, and the trucks increasingly have GPS tracking.1
Moreover, the boundary between products and services is blurring. In one room of my house, I get cable service, which is delivered through physical objects such as a set-top box. In another, I have a purchased product—a TiVo personal video recorder—which, through a CableCard, is connected to a back-end cable and TiVo scheduling and recommendation services. The same core benefit is delivered either way.
Product-service-ecosystem combinations per se are not new. They include televisions, broadcast networks, and television programming; electrical devices and appliances, electrical transmission ...
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