Google
Google is the Internet’s number one
search
engine today. For every Google there are and were many other search engine
companies trying to dominate the market place. What is the reason for
Google’s remarkable success? Google would call that
beta testing. They launched a less than perfect service into the market
place to get market feedback. Feedback is the answer to dominating a market.
It also makes great business sense...
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Learning SWOT
Questions
Fun4Biz
Fun4Biz, a
new-generation
social network for
creative achievers helping them develop their
entrepreneurial creativity
arts and shine, grows through obtaining feedback and
improvement suggestions from its members. During the beta-testing phase,
Fun4Biz received 588 improvement suggestions from its users...
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Dell Computer
Corporation
Dell Computers were the first
personal computer company to organize and build itself around the idea of
direct
customer feedback.
Dell start their
innovation process with asking
their customers, "What would you really want this thing to do? Is there a
different way to accomplish that?" Then they meet with their suppliers and
ask, "Can we do this in a different way?" Then they try to come up with a
totally different approach that exceeds the original objectives.
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Customer Care
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Value
Innovation: Yin-Yang Strategies
To continually bring information from the
outside world into Dell, with an eye toward staying as competitive as they
can,
Michael Dell, Founder of the Dell Computer Corporation used a variety of
innovative approaches. He says, "I also enjoy roaming around outside the
company to see what people think of us. On the Web, nobody knows I'm a CEO.
I'll hang out in chatrooms where actual users commonly chat about Dell and
our competitors. I listen to their conversations as they discuss their
purchases and their likes and dislikes. It's a tremendous learning
opportunity."...
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3M
Ram Charan and Noel Trichy in
their book Every Business Is a Growth Business write: "Many companies
have seemingly done well thinking from the inside out. 3M achieved legendary
success as an innovator by giving its people room
to develop
their ideas in quasi-entrepreneurial fashion. For years, it ranked among
the leaders of FORTUNE's list of most admired companies. But during the
first half of of the 90s, 3M grew its
top line
less than 4% despite the brilliance of its
entrepreneurial technologists.
There wasn't enough feedback from the marketplace – missing were the
insight into the customer's mind, and the
intuitive
observations about needs that could have translated inventiveness into
powerful growth." In late 90s, new leadership got the company back on
track with
outside-in growth initiatives.
Fidelity Investments
Fidelity Investments
leverages the fact that it has thousands of representatives on the phone every
day talking with customers – and
getting
good ideas from them. Through a system called Value Network, Fidelity gives
its phone representatives a tool for providing the organization with unsolicited
customer feedback. Representatives are encouraged, but not required, to submit
issues they recognize as relevant by recording customer suggestions and requests
into a central voice-mailbox. These comments are transcribed and passed along to
the managers responsible for various aspects of Fidelity's service. The
transcriptions are also analyzed by a central quality staff and discussed at
monthly executive meetings to make decisions about improvements that
cut
across functional and organizational lines....
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