Remove 2014 Remove Marketing Remove Productivity
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Your Whole Company Needs to Be Distinctive, Not Just Your Product

Harvard Business

To them, the unit of differentiation is an individual product, service or brand. The heart of differentiation therefore is your company’s ability to develop and promote distinctive products, services, and branded experiences on a consistent basis. Consider, for example, the way many credit cards are marketed.

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Your New Hit Product Might Be Underpriced

Harvard Business

The odds are stacked against new products or services. We have diagnosed thousands of product failures over the last 30 years, and have found recurring patterns. Often new products are over-engineered with too many features, usually at too high a price. The problem with wildly successful products. How could they not have?

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The Dos and Don’ts of Working with Emerging-Market Data

Harvard Business

Applying this, however, is much easier said than done — especially among companies operating in emerging markets. Emerging-market data can be challenging to work with due to significant data gaps, biased data, and outdated or incorrect numbers. Of course, these issues can cause a headache for any company, in any market.

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James Bond, Dunder Mifflin, and the Future of Product Placement

Harvard Business

An obvious solution is product placement, a company paying for its product to be featured prominently in a film or television program as a form of advertising. product placement market grew by 12.8% in 2014, to over $6 billion, and is set to reach over $11 billion by 2019. Interactive product placement.

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How a Flex-Time Program at MIT Improved Productivity, Resilience, and Trust

Harvard Business

In today’s increasingly competitive hiring market, organizations need to think differently about how to attract new employees and retain existing ones. Our flex-time program also delivers financial gain for us in the form of increased productivity, regardless of the weather. Laura Schneider for HBR. Monique Valcour.

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How Customers Come to Think of a Product as an Extension of Themselves

Harvard Business

That’s when consumers feel so invested in a product that it becomes an extension of themselves. Companies that encourage psychological ownership can entice customers to buy more products, at higher prices, and even to willingly promote those products among their friends. It’s called psychological ownership.

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Do Your Customers Actually Want a “Smart” Version of Your Product?

Harvard Business

Our products work with apps or without apps. In 2014, Gartner Research, creator of the Hype Cycle for the Internet of Things, predicted that a “typical family home” could hold up to 500 smart objects by 2022. What Customers Actually Did With Smart Products. I know because I’ve been there.