The Connected Company

A service is different. While processes are designed to be consistent and uniform, services are co-created with customers each and every time a service is rendered. This difference is not superficial but fundamental.

A company can’t create value on its own: value is only created through exchange. The customer must participate in defining and determining that value.

No way to speak up quickly on our own behalf, to talk directly to customers, investors, as well as partners, or let them talk directly to us…we were losing control of our story, in the stores as well as the real world.

Service networks thrive by making a set of complementary services more easily available to customers.

The producer-driven economy is giving way to a new, customer-centered world in which companies will prosper by developing relationships with customers — by listening to them, adapting, and responding to their wants and needs.

A customer-focused company knows what its customers care about and builds capabilities and strategies that reinforce its advantages over time.

The best way to acquire new customers is to engage existing customers.

The majority of business growth in the coming decades — new jobs and new businesses — will come from services.

To win in a Red Queen race, organizations will have to detect, respond, and adapt on many fronts simultaneously, something most of today’s organizations are not designed to do. Some companies will find ways to do this. Those that can’t will not survive.