Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Find and Execute Your Company's Next Big Growth Strategy

This is the first book to take the new market research techniques all the way from the basics of consumer needs all the way to managerial strategy. Without necessarily meaning to, in the process it shows how marketing can get back to its original purpose of serving people's true needs, not just artificially created wants.

You need look no further than Starbucks or the iPod to understand Erich Joachimsthaler's take on marketing, innovation and corporate growth. He says that identifying customer need is a surefire recipe for being in a blind spot, and not seeing your biggest opportunities for innovation and growth. Instead of focusing on making a tastier cupcake or a faster automobile, he recommends understanding the serial and behavioral episodes that make up people's lives. Then build on that reasoning when you go to the marketplace. Joachimsthaler offers plenty of business stories as evidence to support his assertion that the leaders of thriving, cutting-edge companies try to understand and analyze the structure, pattern and emotional code of consumer behavior in context. Instead of studying needs and wants, market leaders first study behaviors. Progressive organizations understand the ecosystem of products or services, and how they intersect in the context of episodic behavior to help people take care of what matters to them: their daily projects, tasks and activities. Joachimsthaler assembles a compelling case for innovation and growth. He says the consumer paradigm has shifted from pushing for products to longing for peace of mind. getAbstract says that if you think he's right, this book will leave you with plenty to ponder.

Erich Joachimsthaler provides a systematic approach to make marketing accountable for innovation and growth of BtoC and BtoB companies. We have seen the innovative business concept of share of customer evolve and being executed over the last years. Hidden in Plain Sight pushes that practice further to the concept of customer advantage, which means consequently managing impact and relevance, products and services have on customers daily lifes - on customers share of the day. Erich Joachimsthaler formulates an explicit model, the demand-first innovation and growth model (DIG-Model), that illuminates the advantages of creating the demand landscape and sets a plan for action to specify the necessary effort to capture the relevant parts of the ecosystem of customer demand, reframes the specific business opportunity space, aligns business processes across all functions and sets the foundation for sustainable innovations and predictable growth. As one reads the carefully selected international cases (e.g. Procter & Gamble, BMW, Apple, Deutsche Telekom, Volkswagen, NetFlix, Starbucks, General Electric, Sony, Allianz) reference is made to all parts of the DIG model and how all pieces have to work together to execute in business practice. Based on his deep insight and understanding of many industries, Erich Joachimsthaler proves his approach carefully and outlines, how innovation and growth can be systematically and replicable managed. That is why this book is relevant for people from many business functions and a variety of industries. Thanks for this outstanding business book. Kevin Frantz

Business managers and executives who want keys to locating the potential for a company's expansion will want to consult HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: HOW TO FIND AND EXECUTE YOUR COMPANY'S NEXT BIG GROWTH STRATEGY. It pinpoints changing consumer needs and usage patterns and tells how to use the DIG model to help companies understand the hidden opportunities for innovation, using the author's 20+ years studying company connections to help pinpoint customer-driven ideas. Business libraries catering to executives will find it a popular, inspirational pick. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

Erich Joachimsthaler offers what he claims is a "new model of strategic innovation for achieving profitable business growth" by abandoning "some of the tried and proven conventions of innovation, marketing, and strategy formulation" and by discarding "some of today's common assumptions and management practices and adopt a fresh way of planning an executing your strategies today and your innovation and growth strategies of tomorrow." The key word is "some" as he explains how. After discussing "hidden opportunities to innovate and grow" in Part I, he focuses in Part II on several companies which exemplify a demand-first innovation and growth model (e.g. Frito-Lay, Allianz, GE Healthcare, and State Street) and then shifts his attention, in Part III, to various strategies by which to realize customer advantage. As the title of this book suggests, Joachimsthaler asserts - and I agree - that many senior-level executives lack the ability to see - really see - "the opportunities presented by the changing consumption or usage behaviors of people [their organizations are] trying to serve. [They] cannot spot or recognize and pursue the abundant opportunities that exist in plain sight." Why? Joachimsthaler suggests several reasons which include routine but disparate processes which fragment a company's view of its customers, perpetuation of the status quo which limits a company's perspective on its competitive marketplace, a mistaken belief that "the key to growth lies in identifying customers' needs and wants [and/or] providing solutions for the tasks or jobs it knows customers must take on and get done," and an "inside-out" perspective which results in what Theodore Levitt once characterized as "marketing myopia." Joachimsthaler suggests three lessons that can be learned from companies such as NetFlix, Sony, and Starbucks: 1. Position existing or new products or services at natural intersections of customers' consumption and use behaviors; 2. Change or enhance customers' daily routines and create transformative experiences around activities, projects, and tasks in new and welcome ways; and 3. Deliver on previously unleashed or unarticulated desires, dreams, fantasies, and urges in the social-cultural context of people's lives. The demand-first innovation (DIG) model can be of substantial benefit to any organization (regardless of size or nature) but it would be a fool's errand to attempt to apply all of the ideas that Joachimsthaler presents. Rather, It would be a fool's errand for anyone who reads this book to attempt to apply all of the ideas that Joachimsthaler presents. Rather, he suggests that those who read this book clearly identify their organization's key demand-relevant assets and make full use of them, rigorously evaluate and develop their organization's distinctive capabilities deployed to manage those assets, choose only those major strategic initiatives that force the integration of all demand-facing processes, and "build the cu