Market Research
Strategy: Customer feedback loops
Being the first to react to changing customer needs and preferences is often the difference between business success and failure. Witness, for example, how quickly Sony lost its early dominance of the portable music device market to Apple, which responded faster and more innovatively to demand for digital audio devices.
Pete Thomond – Disruptive innovator
Pete Thomond spent the past four and a half years working out the secrets of successful innovation. The British academic and business consultant was co-manager of the “Disrupt-it” project, a €3 million European Commission co-sponsored programme of research and business tool development. Now he’s spreading the word downunder, as a Research Fellow and innovation consultant at the Brisbane Graduate School of Business. At 29, he’s young, but how many people do you know with a PhD in disruptive innovation?
Legal: Great brands – treat them right
So, you’ve selected a great brand and have started to build consumer awareness and loyalty in it. And, of course, you’ve done the right thing to protect your rights in the brand by registering it with IP Australia. Your work is finished. Right?
Tony Surtees – Enterprise creator
Highly acclaimed marketing expert Tony Surtees prefers to avoid labels. If he had to nominate one for himself, it would be ‘enterprise creator’. His particular ability is to assess changing market places and pick future trends, uncovering opportunities. He lets us in on some tricks learnt so far in his glittering global career.
Working with fear
If you ever feel under the pump at work, spare a thought for these three professionals. How would you have dealt with the pressure to win gold placed on Cathy Freeman at the Sydney Olympics? Perhaps the intensity that greets a police sniper at a siege would be more to your taste? Could you have surmounted your own vertigo to launch the Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb business? When it’s your job to deal with fear, you’d better learn fast.
Strategy: Securing your first customer
Achieving your first sale can literally make or break a start-up. Many investors will delay committing significant funds until you can identify a customer prepared to pay real money for your product. It is often at this point that many start-ups fail: not because their product is not up to scratch, but because they run [...]
Marketing: Know your customers
Have you ever wondered why customers might say one thing and then behave in a totally different manner? One of the most challenging tasks for marketers today is to predict a customer’s attitude and behaviour towards their product or service. Marketing research should provide an insight into customers’ attitudes and behaviours. Smart businesses know that [...]
The secret of success… it’s no secret
One of the most disappointing aspects of writing about start-up companies is that in most cases there is no secret to their success. Having spoken to founders of hundreds of start-ups companies in the last 10 years, it’s clear that the magic formula is no more of a secret than the recipe for ice. Amnon [...]
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