How Companies Win
Profiting from Demand-Driven Business Models No Matter What Business You're In
By: Rick Kash, David Calhoun
Published: October 12, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
ISBN-10: 0062000454
ISBN-13: 978-0062000453
Publisher: HarperBusiness
"For companies, demand is ultimately about profit. At the end of the day, whoever satisfies demand the best, profits most", write thought leaders The Cambridge Group founder Rick Kash, and Nielsen Company CEO David Calhoun, in their brilliant and insightful book How Companies Win: Profiting from Demand-Driven Business Models No Matter What Business You're In. The authors describe how the old concept of supply-driven models is being overtaken and eclipsed by the emerging demand-driven business model.
Rick Kash (photo left) and David Calhoun recognize that supply exceeds demand in our new customer based economy. As a result, basing competitive advantage on the previous paradigm of supply is no longer sustainable or profitable. Simply expanding product lines and streamlining the supply chain worked well for companies in the past. That economy is rapidly disappearing, and a economy, driven by demand, is emerging, and supplanting the older business model. Forward thinking companies are not only seeking product and service demand ideas from customers, but are even anticipating demand before their customers can even articulate their needs and desires. Because of the need to identify potential demand in advance of the competition, companies need fresh tools, fresh thinking, and an entirely new approach that considers the increasing importance of the demand chain.
David Calhoun (photo left) and Rick Kash understand how customer demand is being shaped and sharpened by the internet and social media. Because the interaction between the newly empowered customers and companies is so dynamic and lightning fast, business leaders must be quicker in anticipating demand. Failure to discover niches and untapped areas of demand may not have been so critical in the past, but in the developing demand based economy, that failure can be disastrous. As a result, companies need new tools to prevent intellectual obsolescence through an inability to identify and take advantage of an opportunity. In the past, write the authors, the concern was inventory becoming outdated or obsolete. Those days of supply based thinking are over. In its place is the concept demand chain where collaboration between manufacturers, retailers, media and customers develop products and services based on what the authors call need states. The need state is the why of a demand, anticipated well in advance of what demand will appear in the future.
For me, the power of the book is how Rick Kash and David Calhoun not only turn the previous supply based economy upside down, but describe why that business model is no longer effective. The authors make a convincing case for the new demand driven economic model, and provide both its theoretical framework, and the practical strategies for embracing and capitalizing on it. This emerging new demand based era poses real challenges for companies, and those organizations who fail to meet those challenges will find themselves at an enormous competitive advantage. Companies who focus on anticipating demand, and who transform their entire outlook on innovation and creativity, will capture those new customer demands. At the same time, the anticipated demand discovered ahead of the competition, will also generate stronger pricing power for the company. That means winning ever greater profits, along with the loyalty of the customers.
David Calhoun and Rick Kash support their analysis with case studies of real world companies who are utilizing the demand based model. Companies who are adding a demand chain to their supply chain, and anticipating customer need states even before the buyer does, are moving well ahead of their competitors. In many cases, the winning companies have put their competition out of business entirely. The authors point to our current economy is transition toward what they call the Third Industrial Revolution. As with any revolution, change will be rapid and fundamental in type and in scope. The marketplace and the overall economy will look very different in the twenty-first century. Any companies who fail to recognize this sea change, and who cling to outmoded twentieth century business practices will be left behind. They will not, and cannot win, in the new demand based world.
I highly recommend the important and transformational book How Companies Win: Profiting from Demand-Driven Business Models No Matter What Business You're In by Rick Kash and David Calhoun, to any business leaders who are serious about understanding the emerging demand based economy. A failure to consider the revolution taking place with customers will spell doom for companies who continue to believe that the old ways are good enough. Companies who do anticipate change, and who embrace it, will be the winners.
Read the compelling and focus changing book How Companies Win: Profiting from Demand-Driven Business Models No Matter What Business You're In by David Calhoun and Rick Kash, and put the power of becoming a demand-based company to work for your organization. The future is already here, and the winning companies of today and tomorrow, will find the essential tools in this book.
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