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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. This is a change from the differentiation strategies of the past.

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

Harvard Business

In its 2014 survey on workplace flexibility, the Society for Human Resource Management found that one-third of companies participating in the survey saw a decrease in absenteeism after they implemented flex-time policies. That benefit should reap results in healthier and happier employees who take fewer unplanned sick days. Monique Valcour.

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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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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.

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#CrisisRoundup of Awesome Links: Week of October 20, 2014

Melissa Agnes

My week has been productive and inspiring. The post #CrisisRoundup of Awesome Links: Week of October 20, 2014 appeared first on Agnes + Day. Welcome to this week’s #CrisisRoundup! Another week come and gone. I hope yours has been the same for you. As usual, here are some worthwhile reads (and a listen!) from this week.

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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.