Andrew Pierce and Hanna Moukanas
Brand portfolio management is not just a marketing issue, in which a sub‐optimal portfolio dilutes marketing messages and confuses customers. It also directly affects corporate…
Abstract
Brand portfolio management is not just a marketing issue, in which a sub‐optimal portfolio dilutes marketing messages and confuses customers. It also directly affects corporate profitability. Ill‐defined and overlapping brands in a portfolio lead to erosion in price premiums, weaker manufacturing economies, and sub‐scale distribution. In a slower economy, the problems of an under performing portfolio are even more acute: While adding brands is easy, it becomes difficult to harvest the value in a brand or to divest it. Effective brand portfolio management starts by creating a fact base about the equity in each brand and the brand’s economic contribution. The application of analytical tools can inform decisions about individual and collective brand strategies from targeting and positioning to investments, partnerships, and extension opportunities. Linking the intangibles of brands to hard financial metrics allows companies to exploit the full potential of their brands and thereby gain a competitive advantage.
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Adrian Slywotzky, Peter Baumgartner, Larry Alberts and Hanna Moukanas
Globalization is changing the nature of competition and value creation in ways more subtle and fundamental than simply cost. By incubating scores of new business models that can…
Abstract
Purpose
Globalization is changing the nature of competition and value creation in ways more subtle and fundamental than simply cost. By incubating scores of new business models that can unseat established companies, globalization is creating opportunities for new value creation and highly profitable growth at the two ends of the value chain – new customer connections at one end and new models of innovation at the other. This article discusses globalization and the changing nature of competition and value creation.
Design/methodology/approach
Provides a viewpoint of globalization and the changing nature of competition and value creation.
Findings
For many companies, the most powerful moves will be to take advantage of university alliances and global talent sourcing. Every company today, large or small, has to draw the global map of the key talent pools for its business, whether that talent consists of software programmers, machinists, biotechnologists, materials scientists, cinematographers, financial analysts, medical technicians, call center operators, or electronics engineers. The key point is to spend more on the highest‐impact activities. One way is to practice the “open innovation” approach as described by Henry Chesbrough of the University of California at Berkeley, which advocates building on the innovations of others. There is tremendous leverage in shifting your thinking from “not invented here” to “invented elsewhere, monetized here.”
Originality/value
Firms that follow the approach advocated in this paper may gain an advantage in value creation by concentrating not on being the first to deploy a technology but on being the best at designing and using their information.