Search results

1 – 10 of 94
Per page
102050
Citations:
Loading...
Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 10 July 2007

Ken Hutt, Ruben Gavieres and Betosini Chakraborty

The authors offer advice on how can managers can distinguish between limited‐potential niche and crucial market foothold opportunities. The distinction is crucial in order to make

1122

Abstract

Purpose

The authors offer advice on how can managers can distinguish between limited‐potential niche and crucial market foothold opportunities. The distinction is crucial in order to make the case for funding and supporting for the small, but potentially important, foothold business areas.

Design/methodology/approach

Over the past few years the authors have worked with a number of large companies. They have found several straightforward tests for distinguishing between footholds and niches that have proved to be very useful when incorporated within a development process.

Findings

The authors propose that a strong foothold opportunity exists if managers answer “yes” to five tests: Does the product provide clear value to new customers? Can an initial, viable product be brought to the market sooner rather than later? Will the first customers pay for the improvements needed to enter larger markets? Will initial applications diffuse the product across traditional market segments? Is there limited reliance on third parties for major product improvements?

Research limitations/implications

Their findings are not intended to be the last word on identifying footholds, but instead a starting point for managers.

Practical implications

Working with company management, the authors have successfully incorporated these tests into early product‐ and market‐development activities and decision making through process steps and metrics.

Originality/value

After asking all five questions, if a manager's analysis of a potential business opportunity indicates that it is a strong foothold, then it's likely it has a significant long‐tern potential for the business.

Details

Strategy & Leadership, vol. 35 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1087-8572

Keywords

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 June 1931

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our…

44

Abstract

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our readers before it begins. The official programme is not in the hands of members at the time we write, but the circumstances are such this year that delay has been inevitable. We have dwelt already on the good fortune we enjoy in going to the beautiful West‐Country Spa. At this time of year it is at its best, and, if the weather is more genial than this weather‐chequered year gives us reason to expect, the Conference should be memorable on that account alone. The Conference has always been the focus of library friendships, and this idea, now that the Association is so large, should be developed. To be a member is to be one of a freemasonry of librarians, pledged to help and forward the work of one another. It is not in the conference rooms alone, where we listen, not always completely awake, to papers not always eloquent or cleverly read, that we gain most, although no one would discount these; it is in the hotels and boarding houses and restaurants, over dinner tables and in the easy chairs of the lounges, that we draw out really useful business information. In short, shop is the subject‐matter of conference conversation, and only misanthropic curmudgeons think otherwise.

Details

New Library World, vol. 34 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 August 2005

Ken Hutt and Alistair Davidson

Two leading technology companies, Intel and H‐P, illustrate both the challenges that managing mature successful products pose and some of the responses companies need to consider.

1950

Abstract

Purpose

Two leading technology companies, Intel and H‐P, illustrate both the challenges that managing mature successful products pose and some of the responses companies need to consider.

Design/methodology/approach

A major consulting firm studied public data about two firms and consulted with their senior managers.

Findings

Both Intel and H‐P have recognized that the marketplace and the evolving value requirements of customers and potential customers should drive every decision a business makes about what activities to focus on; what innovations to add to products; what to outsource; and when and how to change.

Research limitations/implications

More studies are needed on selecting the right R&D strategy and better execution of the product life cycle management processes to speed up development.

Practical implications

The Intel and H‐P cases suggest that being competitive is about meeting the needs of customers better than your competition; staying competitive is about learning new tricks sooner and better than your competition. Selecting the right R&D strategy and better execution of the product life cycle management processes to speed up development are critical in rapidly changing markets.

Originality/value

This article provides a wake up call to any manager who assumes that a firm can innovate its way to sustained competitive advantage. Commoditization can happen rapidly, even on the cutting edge of high tech.

Details

Strategy & Leadership, vol. 33 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1087-8572

Keywords

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 July 1930

WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new…

40

Abstract

WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.

Details

New Library World, vol. 33 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 February 1934

OUR pages continue the discussion on book‐display, about which all has not been said by any means. The ingenious librarian will always sharpen his wits upon the attracting of…

48

Abstract

OUR pages continue the discussion on book‐display, about which all has not been said by any means. The ingenious librarian will always sharpen his wits upon the attracting of readers, and the main problem in the matter is merely: what sort of reader is it most desirable to attract? We do not apologise for this reiteration, because it is the fundamental subject now facing librarians. We are not in the least moved by a comment in a contemporary that we are decrying libraries when we assert, and in spite of him we do assert, that fiction issues nearly all over London show a decline. That decline, we repeat, is due to the slight increase in the employment of readers, and to cheap fiction libraries. What the public librarian has to decide is if he shall compete with such libraries or more definitely diverge from them. If a middle course is preferred—as it usually is by Britons—what is that course? Ultimately, is the educated reader to be the standard for whom the library works, or the uneducated? Or, to put it another way, is the librarian in any way responsible for the quality of the books his community reads? Our readers, young and not so young, are invited to help us to answers to these live questions.

Details

New Library World, vol. 36 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Available. Content available
Article
Publication date: 10 July 2007

Robert M. Randall

283

Abstract

Details

Strategy & Leadership, vol. 35 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1087-8572

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 April 1979

Members of the Council will be in attendance at this years InterNepcon Exhibition, which is being held on Tuesday 16th—Thursday 18th October, manning a special table which will be…

16

Abstract

Members of the Council will be in attendance at this years InterNepcon Exhibition, which is being held on Tuesday 16th—Thursday 18th October, manning a special table which will be strategically located on the balcony of the Blue Hall.

Details

Circuit World, vol. 6 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0305-6120

Available. Content available
Article
Publication date: 10 July 2007

Catherine Gorrell

70

Abstract

Details

Strategy & Leadership, vol. 35 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1087-8572

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 January 1933

THE article which we publish from the pen of Mr. L. Stanley Jast is the first of many which we hope will come from his pen, now that he has release from regular library duties…

63

Abstract

THE article which we publish from the pen of Mr. L. Stanley Jast is the first of many which we hope will come from his pen, now that he has release from regular library duties. Anything that Mr. Jast has to say is said with originality even if the subject is not original; his quality has always been to give an independent and novel twist to almost everything he touches. We think our readers will find this to be so when he touches the important question of “The Library and Leisure.”

Details

New Library World, vol. 35 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 March 1907

MUCH has already been said and written upon the subject of the indicator: but in view of the general trend of advanced Public Library administration a little space may with…

47

Abstract

MUCH has already been said and written upon the subject of the indicator: but in view of the general trend of advanced Public Library administration a little space may with advantage be devoted again to the consideration of its value as a modern library appliance. Passing over (a) the decision of that curiously constituted committee formed in 1879 to consider and report on indicators, and (b) the support which it received in 1880 from the Library Association, it may be said that for the next fourteen or fifteen years the indicator system was the popular, almost the universal, system in vogue throughout the country. Of late years professional opinion as to its value has undergone a remarkable change. The reaction which has set in was brought about chiefly by the introduction of Open Access in 1894, with the many reforms that accompanied it, though much, doubtless, was due to the prevalence of a more exact and systematic knowledge of librarianship, and to the natural evolution of ideas. It is not, however, intended in this paper to compare the indicator with the open access system, but with others suitable to the requirements of a closed library.

Details

New Library World, vol. 9 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

1 – 10 of 94
Per page
102050