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David Aaker on Owning Game-Changing Subcategories: Uncommon Growth in the Digital Age

September 11, 2021

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Takeover- Why Akbar is Relevant

Akbar, was a really powerful king. He had an empire that extended from the mountains of Hindu-Kush to the Bay of Bengal. As an emperor he had the sheer might to crush his opponents, to smash their kingdom into rubble. Like they do ‘a hostile’ (takeover) these days. Akbar, however, preferred to integrate. He married into the Rajputs , his fiercest & most tenacious opponents. His favoured queen was a Rajput queen Jodhabai. He gave Rajputs a lot of respect, important jobs in the army and bestowed on them a lot of honours. It was a wise thing to do. While Akbar was an uncontested Emperor, the Rajputs remained kings of their small kingdoms. So while Akbar had a vast empire he saved a lot of his time from martial pursuits. Instead he worked on pursuits of a different kind like ideating about a new religion. History teaches us that takeovers in the Indian context are never clean. It is not as if somebody is selling his company, because the company will be better off with ...

Make it dumb & simple. Or forget about scaling up a business idea

Make it ‘dumb and simple’. It is something that I spend a lot of time on; convincing the CEO to think from the customer standpoint, talking to the department head about what will deliver results at the frontlines. It requires a lot of thinking to make something ‘dumb’ and it is never simple to make anything ‘simple’. Companies are often caught in a situation where they are terribly excited about a slew of product launches or service upgrades which they think is going to be terribly exciting to the customer. The customer may indeed be excited, only if somebody told him about it or better still answered all his queries. Our client, a travel company, launched a few options through which air ticketing could be done. This included the GDS option, tie up with a wholesaler & an alliance with an OTA. These competitive options would enable the client & his franchisees to offer the best deals and a variety of options to their customers for a specific route say Mumbai-Bangalore. T...

What they don't teach you at IIM. MBA model of producing arm chair thinkers

Management education in the best institutes in the country and all over the world lays great emphasis on strategy development rather than execution. Management institutes have umpteen number of case study discussions on 'what should be done' rather than 'how it should be done'. Management students are trained to strategize , not execute . The curriculum also emphasizes on strategy formulation with courses relating to business strategy, marketing strategy etc. Various management games and cases at the school level encourage theoretical discussions and emphasis on 'strategy formulation'. The need of the hour is to have dedicated courses that deal exclusively with execution; courses that look at what happens when the 'rubber meets the road'. It is not as if execution is totally absent, but given its vital necessity for business success , it has not been incorporated in a meaningful manner. Part of the problem also stems from background of many manage...

Chris Hood of Google on API as Application People Interface. The Need to Build API as an Asset

What is an API First strategy and how does it help marketer deliver unique, engaging and connected experiences to customers? What are the opportunities to monetize data through APIs for businesses ? Chris Hood is the Head of Business Innovation & Strategy at Google. In this conversation on Jagged with Jasravee he answers the above mentioned questions and many more. API as Application People Interface Chris argues that those who believe that API's are nothing but integrators, will be the first people who are going to go out of business ! It is important to look at APIs as Application People Interface because that's what they do. They're not just an interface between a technology and technology. But when we look at it from a business lens, and we say things like “I'm driving down the street, and I want to connect directly with my grocery store, so that I can get my Ben and Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream” that's a people connector. The API is p...

David Aaker on Owning Game-Changing Subcategories: Uncommon Growth in the Digital Age

Why is ‘my brand is better than your brand’ strategy irrelevant? How formation & re-framing of Game-Changing Subcategories is the only way to drive growth? The “Father of Modern Branding”, David Aaker answers the above questions in the podcast & video-cast- Jagged with Jasravee. Unlike traditional views of disruptive innovation as creating a whole new category, Aaker argues that growth occurs more often through creating something new within an existing category that delivers an improved customer experience or relationship. That has as much to do with branding as technology. “What is needed for a winning subcategory strategy, and what is missing from most strategy books, is branding,’” Aaker says. “You always need an exemplar brand that will represent, position, and scale the subcategory—and ultimately build barriers, such as branded innovations or brand communities, to inhibit competitors.” David believes that subcategory-driven growth has exploded in the digit...

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