00:00:01
our guests today are nicholas eagle co and christian jewish nikola is a professor in the wharton school
00:00:08
management department and christian is in the operations and information management department both of them are
00:00:15
co directors of the mac institute for innovation management and we are going to be speaking with them today about the
00:00:22
mutant new book called connected strategy building continuous customer relationships for competitive advantage
00:00:30
by nicola and christian thank you so much for joining us today on knowledge at work oh thank you for having us
00:00:35
always a pleasure to be here thank you Michael Thanks so to begin with you start your book with a really
00:00:41
interesting story it's about Disney and it's Magic Band Service and Nick and I
00:00:47
wonder if I could start with you can you share that story with our audience and what does it really reveal about the way
00:00:54
in which companies have changed the way that they deal with customers yeah so usually right the connection you have
00:01:01
with Disney was a ticket and you would hand over the ticket and you would enter the park and that was sort of the
00:01:05
transaction that you had nowadays with the Magic Band about the Magic Man of course allows you to do as a customer is
00:01:11
to have very easy very frictionless transactions right it opens up your hotel room it opens up the fast lane you
00:01:18
can easily purchase things with it of course that sometimes makes also the bill rather magical at the end of its
00:01:23
trip because it didn't even notice what you all were purchasing because it was
00:01:26
so easy to do but so from the customer perspective it really makes it a very nice experience but now also from the
00:01:33
side of Disney what it allows Disney to do is to really know where everyone is within the park and as a result I can
00:01:40
direct you to for instance to a line of an attraction that is shorter or you can
00:01:44
actually pre-program a particular itinerary and so that actually allows Disney to what they call jump start
00:01:50
operations at the moment they open up the gates to the park so in some sense this is sort of why we call it kind of
00:01:56
the magic of the Magic Band or the magic of the connected strategy is it makes customer happier while at the same time
00:02:02
actually drives efficiency for the company it's a question what does this signify for the way in which companies
00:02:10
relate to their customers how is how does this story give us insights into how that is changing really every company
00:02:16
has to answer two questions right - what into how the what is like how do I delight the customer how do I provide a
00:02:22
magical magical customer experience and that is the element that Nicolai just touched on when he talked about like
00:02:29
opening your room wherever you are ordering meals having a memory book automatically created all of that is
00:02:35
very exciting the drives of the willingness to pay at the same time the other part of the magic here is the
00:02:41
whole question right usually when we as companies I'm an Operations professor
00:02:45
when I hear all the marketing people talk about those customer experiences in the wall I'm just going to who's going
00:02:51
to do the work and who's going to pay for that and the part of the magic here
00:02:54
is also with the connected bent or was connected strategies in general is that we're changing the way that we work we
00:03:00
can as Nikolai said we jumpstart operations we can basically do a better job at scheduling people we can automate
00:03:07
some of the things and that allows us to provide these better customer experiences at lower fulfillment cost
00:03:14
potentially and that is ultimately what shifts that frontier that trade-off that
00:03:18
you always have between the customer delight and the fulfillment cost it shift that frontier out and that's where
00:03:24
you gain competitive advantage from so let's sort of go a little bit deeper into what does this mean what what does
00:03:32
this tell us about what a connected strategy actually is and and and why should companies be thinking about it
00:03:38
so connected strategies really have two elements to them sort of on the one hand
00:03:42
there is what we call the connected customer relationship and that is really rather than just sort of waiting for a
00:03:48
customer to come to us with a particular need and then we may have something that
00:03:52
you want or maybe not sort of a connection we call you know by what we have and that is quite often how firms
00:03:57
still interact with their customers to really get a much deeper relationship with customers that allows us to
00:04:03
anticipate potentially needs and to have a much more continuous relationship province of episodic interactions so
00:04:08
that's one part of a connected strategy the second part of the connected strategy relates a bit what Christian
00:04:14
was just talking about of how do we actually create these connected customer relationships at a very low cost or with
00:04:20
high efficiency and that's second part what we call they connect the delivery
00:04:23
model and they're sort of you know various pieces to each of these but this is
00:04:27
the two key elements and really the connected delivery model is a lot about of how do we connect various players in
00:04:33
our ecosystem to make really this relationship happen we'll come back in a bit to some of those elements but I
00:04:39
would assume Christian that based on well think what I was saying that you need a fair amount of
00:04:45
underpinning of technology in order to make these connections happen and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit
00:04:51
about what are the some of the technologies that are involved in in the development of these connected
00:04:57
strategies so I don't want to downplay the role of technologies here so clearly
00:05:00
a lot of these things have only become possible with the arrival of connected technologies
00:05:05
if you think back of the Disney bear Magic Band it started as a wearable device that people would have on the
00:05:11
wrists from then many of the modern parks are basically getting the same user experience but by just leveraging
00:05:18
your smartphone really if you think about it every one of us here has a Magic Band in that pocket and that is in
00:05:24
many ways democratize the connected technology so it used to be something that only like wealthy well endowed
00:05:31
firms could play was now every startup can start providing these magical customer experiences so the technology
00:05:37
in many ways without putting the the importance here under kind of painting a picture that technology is not important
00:05:45
but I think the big questions that we see companies arresting was is the imagination of new business models right
00:05:51
it's like what user experiences do you provide how do you use the technology to
00:05:55
drive down to fulfillment costs that is the less of attending technological problem but ultimately a business model
00:06:01
problem exactly so before we come to the business model I was wondering it I think it might be
00:06:06
helpful to look at in addition to Disney one or two other examples of companies say in retail or publishing that may
00:06:15
have views connected strategies yeah would you like to talk about I'll take one and then question can can take
00:06:20
another one and well let me actually go to running shoes because I think this is
00:06:25
sort of a wonderful example it's sort of it used to be that the only connection I
00:06:30
have with Nike is every one and a half years when I would buy a pair of new shoes and of course then my connection
00:06:34
was not with Nike right it was with footlocker or wherever I would purchase these shoes so I didn't nowadays
00:06:40
by shoes anymore either by a shoe with a chip embedded that ship talks to my cell
00:06:44
phone that cell phone connects me to my virtual running club right and all of a sudden Nike actually has a daily
00:06:48
interaction with me they know when I use the product how I used the product and now what Nike can do is actually try to
00:06:56
fulfill a deeper need that I have actually my need is not to run my actual need is I want to finish my first
00:07:01
marathon right and now we have a very different value proposition as Nike right now I want to help you with that
00:07:07
goal in your life rather than just you know that you run at the same time of course Nike cannot provide all the
00:07:13
services that I need but they can maybe connect me to some of these services right so they don't have to backward
00:07:19
integrate into becoming running coaches or you know connecting me to their employees but they can connect me to
00:07:25
some other people who love to run or some some coaches if I need some professional advice right and so it's
00:07:30
it's both kind of having right this deeper relationship now I know more about you now on the one hand I can
00:07:35
create a much deeper relationship and help you achieve some deeper goals and at the same time I'm connecting you to
00:07:40
some other parties that you were not connected previously and that again allows me kind of to create this
00:07:46
customer experience at a relatively high efficiency one of the first use cases I
00:07:52
got interested is was the world of connected health care so I have a secondary position at the School of
00:07:57
Medicine I've done a fair bit of research with my friends Kevin volp and David Ashe over in the Pearlman school
00:08:04
and so if you think about health care it has been really very episodic in the past that you get sick you get in the
00:08:11
hospital and while you're in the four walls of the hospital the hospital does
00:08:14
everything for you is taking care for you really well spends tons and tons of resources at the moment that you get
00:08:21
discharged they say goodbye and you're on your own right and then you're
00:08:24
struggling with things such living a healthy lifestyle medication adherence other health choices and if you think
00:08:30
about either post discharge or in the preventive space most of the health decisions that will impact our lives are
00:08:37
happening outside the walls of the healthcare system and so the value proposition of connected healthcare is a
00:08:43
sneaker I described it going from providing me a running shoe of towards making me a better athlete it's keep me
00:08:48
healthy as opposed to just letting me see a doctor so that is the health care space
00:08:54
another one who have done a bit of research we described it in the book and we see enormous potential for this so
00:09:00
how would you know if you look now to business models that are being built around connected strategies could you
00:09:08
talk a little bit about the business models and how it helps companies to create a sustainable competitive
00:09:13
advantage all the too difficult questions so let's start maybe actually with the last one of the because I'm the
00:09:23
strategy guy so I have to answer the question around sustainable competitive advantage right because it links back to
00:09:29
what Christian was just saying kind of the good news about connected strategies is quite often the technologies that you
00:09:35
need to create them are available you don't have to develop them right others
00:09:39
have already developed them Google has developed Google Maps someone has developed 5g right and so I as a firm
00:09:45
don't necessarily have to become a technology company so that's the good
00:09:47
news the bad news is all my competitors have also access to the same technology all
00:09:52
right and so I think what we are seeing is a lot of these ideas about deeper relationships personalization they'll
00:09:59
become table stakes right everyone will do this and so that's why in some sense
00:10:03
we feel this is actually a really important phenomenon because if you don't do it you certainly will have a
00:10:07
disadvantage now the bad news is even if you do it you may not have an advantage
00:10:12
because everyone else is also doing it right and so to us actually kind of the source of sustainable competitive
00:10:19
advantage through connected strategies is really coming from what we will call the repeat loop that you're doing it
00:10:24
again and again and again and if you really use the fact that I have now more interactions with you that I'm learning
00:10:31
more about you and I learn more about people like you so I'm learning at both
00:10:35
at the individual level and at the population level that kind of insight that I can gather that's probably more
00:10:41
difficult to copy then it is kind of a particular technology that I put in place right so that's kind of on the on
00:10:47
the sustainable competitive advantage front because that's I think really important I mean again since we are you
00:10:53
know in the in the world of IPOs of uber and lyft right the question is not why is uber better than a cab company all
00:11:00
right so rube is a nice example of a firm that has created write a product that customers like more and they can
00:11:05
create the product at lower cost so that really disrupted that industry but that's not the critical question
00:11:10
right the critical question is why super better than lyft right and that's a much
00:11:14
harder question right so your firm's can push out the frontier but if then other firms can find that
00:11:19
same spot on that new frontier you still don't have an advantage yeah that leaves
00:11:23
the question of the business model in particularly the revenue model some what kind of unanswered and let me try to
00:11:28
tackle that in the old days when you wanted a product or service you would just pay a transaction price that you
00:11:35
would want to have a toothbrush you want to see your dentist or their surprise for that and you would pay that price
00:11:40
and you receive that service or that product if you think about connected devices if you think about a toothbrush
00:11:46
for example that would be able to analyze your teeth to some diagnostic provide your feedback with your brushing
00:11:51
behavior heck even alert your dentist when it sees a cavity you can basically provide different forms of revenue model
00:11:58
right so suddenly the toothbrush could not be sold for just a price I could say like the toothbrush is basically
00:12:04
available for free to consider the consumer the consumer pays 10 cents per minute of brushing I could say leave the
00:12:10
toothbrushes becoming available for free to the consumer it is paid by the dental
00:12:15
insurance it is paid by the dentist I could make it pay for performance which is a big buzzword in terms of revenue
00:12:21
models I could basically say like well the toothbrush is basically getting a fee per week or per month that my tooth
00:12:28
my teeth are healthy and so it's basically aligning the incentives in the value chain which previously was not
00:12:34
possible because we just did not have the information about the performance usefulness and the value that the
00:12:39
customer device out of our product or is a service that's that's that's a very
00:12:45
interesting way of thinking about it so thank you for walking me through that you see one of the things I found very
00:12:51
interesting what you see in your book is that connected strategies need to be carefully designed and I was wondering
00:12:59
if you could talk a little bit about the connected strategy framework young--and
00:13:02
and how that works sure so let me think about these different connected customer experiences
00:13:08
we kind of sketched out can afford different ways of how we see firms are connecting with customers and you know
00:13:14
before going there it's may be helpful to really think about when you interact
00:13:17
with a customer there's a whole customer journey customer has with you it's not just the
00:13:21
product or service that they like but there are lots of other steps involved right a customer needs to become aware
00:13:26
of their needs then a customer needs to say okay how can I actually fulfill these needs what are the options that
00:13:31
are out there what's the best option for me all right so if you think about you
00:13:34
know I need to real say for retirement right okay what are all the options out there that I could right and what's the
00:13:40
best option for me so that's not an easy problem all right then I have to go
00:13:43
about ordering this product I have to pay for it I have to receive it then finally I can experience it and then
00:13:49
instead of some after sale service maybe support mine so there's a whole customer
00:13:53
journey so one particular or we call it connected customer experience is what we
00:13:58
call respond to desire so here a customer knows precisely what he or she wants and they want sort of press that
00:14:04
order button and have kind of the rest of this customer journey to be as frictionless as possible then we have
00:14:09
curated offering which works a little bit early in the customer journey here I'm really trying to help you to
00:14:14
understand what are actually all the options that are out there and what might be the best option for you then
00:14:19
there is the coach behavior connected customer experience where we say okay once in a while you are aware of your
00:14:24
needs but maybe once a while kind of a tap on the shoulder kind of is helpful right hey have you really taken your
00:14:29
medicine today or have you really walked or have you you know done you exercise and then sometimes actually I Zafar may
00:14:36
understand you need before you realize that you had the need and if you've given me permission I will just solve
00:14:41
the problem for you right so that's kind of the idea about your printer's running
00:14:45
out of toner and your printer just reorders the toner right and so all of a sudden I never had to do this right
00:14:50
because my printer knew it was running out of toner so it could do that so we have these different kinds of customer
00:14:55
experiences that we can create so the important design point kind of coming back to the design question is really
00:15:01
that we do not think there's one size fits all we certainly do not think that
00:15:06
automated execution is always the best way of dealing with a particular situation
00:15:12
customers will differ a lot in their preferences of how much they want to do things versus have the firm do for them
00:15:18
right some customers say well give me some choices and I'll choose that's
00:15:22
exactly what I need others say please just do it for me for me even the same customer in different
00:15:27
situations will have different preferences right and I think like everything else you know we need to
00:15:31
understand do you like black do you like red here we need to understand right what kind of connected customer
00:15:37
experience are you comfortable with what kind of customer experience would you really value right and that's I think
00:15:42
we're kind of the design part comes in that firms need to have probably a whole
00:15:46
range of different connected customer experiences available for different customers for different situations I
00:15:51
think that sounds right because a behavior that some customers might welcome because it takes the burden off
00:15:57
them some other customers might find intrusive right yeah absolutely and the same one Nicole I just articulated in
00:16:03
terms of these four different connected relationships is true on the operational
00:16:07
on the fulfillments that if you think about how are you going to fulfill the demand how are you gonna what are you
00:16:13
can do to delight the customer you can think about the Disney which basically is pretty integrated from you go to a
00:16:20
theme park and they just control all of that at the other extreme you can think about platforms where you think about
00:16:27
again when they talked about uber and lyft neither uber no lyft really employs drivers and owns cars with very few
00:16:33
exceptions they basically act as market makers and then at the very extreme of if you think about peer-to-peer networks
00:16:40
such as a Wikipedia or PatientsLikeMe it's not even clear who's providing the
00:16:45
service and who is benefiting the service there's just a network and so just like you have to be intentional
00:16:50
about what kind of relationship you offer to your customer you have to be intentional about how are you going to
00:16:55
do that and again that creates a little framework that we call the connected strategy matrix you have to basically
00:17:00
think about it's for different customer relationships you have to think about
00:17:05
what we call five different connection architectures and that gives you what is basically a four by five like 20
00:17:11
different options it sounds like intimidating but we found that a very helpful tool for you to think about like
00:17:17
how else could I basically kind of delight a particular market segment where is there a potentially disruptive
00:17:23
threat emerging by a startup that I see elsewhere and we find that mapping this out maybe in describing this connected
00:17:29
strategy matrix is a very helpful exercise the other thing I found really interesting about the book is you have
00:17:36
this four four four step framework of where customers can you recognize request respond and repeat
00:17:46
and I was wondering can we take one or two examples of how companies are using this kind of a framework - yeah
00:17:51
absolutely so that really goes back kind of a little bit to this customer journey
00:17:55
so we can really you think about it and that in that context right so the first thing is we have to kind of recognize a
00:18:01
customer need or we have to help the customer recognize what needed is that that they have this is whether the front
00:18:07
end of the of the customer journey then there is okay now I know there is a need
00:18:11
now I need to figure out right what are the right options what's the best option
00:18:14
and how do we actually order that all right so that's the request part so I'm
00:18:17
taking that information about the customer and translate it eventually into an action right a order for a
00:18:23
particular solution right which requires me to first understand it's the solution
00:18:26
that I want to order right and then there comes the respond part so now I as a firm get this information either from
00:18:32
you or I have deduced that is actually the best option that you want well have I actually this optional my shell Friday
00:18:38
am I actually able to get it to you in a timely fashion in a way right so that's
00:18:42
kind of what we would call that connected customer experience so I had the recognizing requesting and
00:18:48
responding and then comes that last loop that repeat loop right so now can I do this again and again and again and can I
00:18:54
by doing this learn more about you learn more about customers like you and become
00:18:59
better over time in those three other Rs why the recognize request and respond right and I think this is again sort of
00:19:05
if you can get on to that positive feedback loop that sort of where the sustainable advantage might come from
00:19:10
yeah I think Nicholas gave the examples of the different customer relationships earlier on I think recognize requests
00:19:17
respond repeat that applies both to an uber were recognized really means that I'm waiting there till the customer
00:19:25
presses a button on an app saying that I want a car towards recognized being a sensor that is implanted in your gut
00:19:31
realizing that you have not taken your medication right the recognizer can be fulfilled or done in very different ways
00:19:37
and we find that framework very helpful to really distinguish between these four
00:19:42
different ways that we just described in the book and we also make if we find comfort and that's kind of being
00:19:49
confident that they are not like three other user experiences that we forgot so we break it up in the in the way that
00:19:55
we're fairly confident that those are the four connected customer relationships that are out
00:19:59
there and again they're broken up into what the role what role the firm place
00:20:03
in this journey around recognize request and respond so companies think about developing and implementing these
00:20:11
customer journeys and connected strategies what are some of the pitfalls that they should be aware of in mindful
00:20:20
of do you think yeah so I think one pitfall is kind of cushion already alluded to this a little bit of focusing
00:20:28
on the technology yeah because that's sort of did the most visible aspect right oh you know the Magic Band how
00:20:34
cool is this why it is something that you wear here and then we have the pylons where you write and we need to
00:20:38
put the the the network in place and that's clearly important but that's to
00:20:43
certain extent the easy part of putting a connected strategy in place so just sticking with that example for a
00:20:49
moment of the of the Magic Band because we were able to talk to some of the people at Disney who actually created
00:20:54
this for them right and they said really the more difficult part was the organizational part of implementing this
00:21:01
right because in order to create a really sort of consistent customer experience what has to happen right the
00:21:08
customer needs to feel like well I'm obviously of dealing in some sense with
00:21:11
the same organization right whether I go online and book whether I get to the hotel but I get to the theme park and
00:21:17
the problem is that up to that point really a customer had to work through our organizational chart right oh this
00:21:25
is that problem wall now you have to deal with our online division oh this problem you deal with a theme-park
00:21:28
division oh this is the restaurant division right and and so you as the customer had to work through this and
00:21:33
one part of the organization didn't know about that customer and the other part
00:21:37
of the organization right so you had treated every time as if you were like this different person even though you
00:21:42
were the same person right and so again like customer centricity right is sort of a a keyword and and every company
00:21:48
wants to do this and hardly any company's actually organized around that right because we organized by functions
00:21:54
and there are good reasons we organized that way and that however makes it really hard kind of right so for
00:21:59
instance to treat the customer as the same customer whenever we see it whoever within our organization sees that
00:22:05
customer or whatever store you go to or whether you're online or on the phone or
00:22:09
whatever right but unless we get to that point of record hey that's the same customer who become
00:22:16
very hard to learn more and more about that customer right to really accumulate the learning and again so that's why
00:22:22
kind of these it sounds easy kind of right and then we repeat and then we learn but that's really the hard part
00:22:28
but and that's an again in part it's a technology issue do we actually have the
00:22:31
IT systems in place that can talk to each other and make that data exchange feasible but quite often it's also an
00:22:37
organizational issue do even had the incentives to send my data over there because maybe now you know something
00:22:42
that he shouldn't know or kind of I am you know I don't get promoted but he
00:22:44
does right and then so it's those issues that are quite often actually quite
00:22:48
quite difficult yeah weird add to that that a lot of the technologies that we describe in the
00:22:54
book like curating offerings learning from the repeat cycle customization in general they're all very big data type
00:23:02
of applications and we're at Wharton we are the school of big data data analytics we believe in this methodology
00:23:08
but I think there's also a real opportunity for small data here if you think about the pain points about
00:23:14
products or services again Nikolai's example earlier on about the running shoe that the running shoe purchase it's
00:23:20
not just about the shoe it's about self fulfillment it's a very emotional thing
00:23:24
if you think about pain points when it comes to getting clinical care when it comes to financial savings for
00:23:30
retirement those are very personal things and these pain points other than the products or services themselves this
00:23:37
whole customer journey is something that management has to go out and study and you find these insights really best by
00:23:44
interviewing people like going out there yourself even as an executive level and
00:23:48
leveraging or what I call small data contextual immersion we teaches in our innovation and design courses so I'd
00:23:55
really being willing to do the qualitative user research as opposed to just relying on click streams and big
00:24:02
data so yeah so there's no piggyback again on that that comment right sort of
00:24:06
the first pitfall is it's all about the technology I think the second pitfall
00:24:09
it's all about the data right and so kind of again where I think a lot of firms currently are stuck in is this
00:24:16
notion okay it's data that's important and it's relatively easy to gather data
00:24:20
so everyone is gathering a lot of data now I have every click you've ever done
00:24:23
on my website but I have no idea what to do with it all right and this is exactly what what
00:24:28
Christian was saying I think quite often probably the better way to do it is to first ask what are the pain points we
00:24:32
want to resolve and then what kind of data do I need to resolve these pain points I think too often right now it's
00:24:39
like let's just collect everything and then we kind of tried to figure out what
00:24:41
to do with it last couple of questions as connectivity continues to increase how do you see the future of connected
00:24:51
strategy where do you think things are going to go in the future he looks at me and says am an innovation professor
00:25:01
studied computer science in the 1980s and I'll tell you one anecdote from that
00:25:05
I had a class on computer networks it was called back then a famous text book by a guy called professor Tannenbaum and
00:25:13
it was the only subject I got a D in and I remember sitting there and saying like
00:25:19
why would it make sense to connect two computers to each other and so clearly I bitterly fail as becoming a technology
00:25:27
visionary and I think the the evidence on very smart people from the stories of IBM and Microsoft they are full of bad
00:25:36
predictions technology for 10-15 years is very hard to predict the one prediction that I'm comfortable making
00:25:43
is we're going to be more connected and or less connected I think that one is a
00:25:47
fairly safe prediction and therefore it's the only prediction I'm willing to
00:25:50
make what does it imply yeah well I think what again so the the general thrust that we see is I think towards
00:26:01
personalization I don't mean I think that is kind of a general thrusted and we can do that now in a more
00:26:07
cost-effective way because I can learn about you more cost-effectively I'm able
00:26:12
to respond to this in a more cost-effective way and so that I think is kind of a general trend we're going
00:26:17
to see right now the underlying technologies will evolve right how do you actually do that but I think that is
00:26:22
something that again kind of the generation is growing up right now they're getting used to that right and
00:26:26
so again it's sort of this notion of you know Amazon knows everything about me or
00:26:31
it makes it really easy for me to order and I now go to my doctor and I have to fill out again all of these forms right
00:26:36
I mean Wow why is that right and so I think that expectation will rise similar probably
00:26:42
in our business leader in education that the expectation of students will rise about you know how customized is my
00:26:48
learning journey right and I think that those things kind of will inevitably happen in and partly in enabled through
00:26:55
the connectivity are enabled by data analytics enabled by by data but hopefully then also supported by a
00:27:01
deeper understanding kind of how to use that data I think the other prediction that we make in the book is one that it
00:27:07
sounds so much Nicola was describing these four connected customer relationships it sounds so much that
00:27:13
everything could be automated or everything could be moved away from one firm into market makers ultimately into
00:27:20
peer-to-peer networks there is not our prediction that it's not our prediction
00:27:24
oftentimes if you ask yourself as a consumer what you want as long as the firm is reasonably responsive to your
00:27:30
needs and desires you totally find making the purchasing decision yourself and so we don't see everything drifting
00:27:37
towards this cloud network creators and on the other end on the user experience and the connected customer relationship
00:27:45
size not everything will be automated for the consumer I have one final question for both for each of you
00:27:52
actually and that is let's imagine that I'm not here in this seat then in my
00:27:57
place there is a CEO of a company who has just finished reading your book and is convinced that connected strategy is
00:28:05
the way that he or she wants to take the company and wants to do you each of you
00:28:11
to answer the question where do I begin where do I start getting things done so maybe you can
00:28:18
give some advice absolutely so the first step you've already taken you've gotten
00:28:23
our book so that is that is already good now actually what was quite a pleasure for us to do in writing this book that
00:28:31
we were teaching at while we were writing it and really our objective of writing this book was to make it
00:28:37
actually as applicable as possible and so I think what sets our book a little bit apart is that we have these three
00:28:42
chapters in that which we call workshop chapters where we really in some sense take Bayat the CEO or take a manager by
00:28:48
the hand and say okay first think about these questions then all these questions fill up this
00:28:52
worksheet full of these worksheets right and so kind of again that's what we're
00:28:55
trying to really to do in the book and so I think it you know the first kinds of questions would be for instance by
00:29:01
just a brainstorm a little bit of what would it mean if I knew customer needs before customer know them themselves
00:29:06
right what would this actually allow me to do right there's this kind of information but but then we kind of more
00:29:11
systematically would say okay I think a very good starting point is indeed to map out a customer journey you know to
00:29:16
think about the pain points to think about willingness to pay drivers think about what information currently flows
00:29:22
what information flows you need and you know go from go from there but so yeah yeah I saw there those workshop chapters
00:29:29
make it kind of more something gives you something concrete to do we've broken
00:29:33
and up each chapter as like four or five six seven steps that you can work on you
00:29:38
can fill out forms if you're still struggling it is a heart and topic at the same time very important for you on
00:29:44
our website connected to strategy comm we have basically taking these worksheets and we have case studies that
00:29:51
we worked with companies we worked with some very smart MBA students to basically avoid the situation that you
00:29:57
sit in front of an empty piece of paper and don't know where to start so who you have as a starting point
00:30:02
other companies who have gone through that journey and it allows you to say like well my company is different or
00:30:07
then let me change that part of the worksheet but you don't have to start from scratch with a workshop chapters
00:30:11
and our website connected strategy comm you should be in good shape to make the next step to collection thank you so
00:30:19
much for speaking with knowledge at work of thank you for having us always a pleasure thank you so much for more
00:30:26
insight from knowledge at Wharton please visit knowledge Gordon edu [Music]