Strategy from the Outside In: Profiting from Customer Value (Repost)

Shareholder value . . . core competence . . .six sigma . . . right sizing . . . These influential strategy ideas have lured many companies into a dangerous internal focus, viewing the world from the inside out. As a result, companies lose sight of the market, which leads to poor results over the long run. Inside-out thinking distracts companies from the core purpose of a business: to create and serve customers.

Fulfilling that purpose can be done only by approaching strategy from the outside in. In this refreshing look at creating enduring business value, two business school professors from The Wharton School and The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, challenge you to shift your perspective. They demonstrate that companies that adopt–and fight to keep–an outside-in view focused on customer value have grown revenue, profit, and shareholder value through both boom and bust business cycles.

Applying years of research, George S. Day and Christine Moorman illustrate that an outside-in view requires constant vigilance and focus on four customer value imperatives:

Be a customer value leader
Innovate new value for customers
Capitalize on the customer as an asset
Capitalize on the brand as an asset

Only companies that operate with an outside-in view from the C-suite to the front lines can expect to maximize and profit from customer value.