Harvard Business Review

MAY 5, 2016

Aggravated and depressed by the decline of their core memory business in the 1980s, Intel’s top management struggled for strategic clarity. Grove’s 1980 question remains as ruthlessly relevant to C-suites as Ted Levitt’s 1960 classic, “What business are you in?” Profitable customers matter most.

Levitt 8

Levitt Disaggregation Kaizen Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 13, 2017

Theodore Levitt's classic theory -- in under two minutes. See More Videos > See More Videos > Some managers would have kept moving. Grovestand wasn’t Hughes’s only innovation. Averages are the enemies of innovators. Innovation happens at the fringes, not at the center. Related Video.

Levitt 8

Levitt Video Short-term Learning-by-Doing 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Christensen and two co-authors revisit where disruption theory stands today in a new HBR article, “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” As Ted Levitt pointed out 55 years ago, companies develop significant myopia over time, only seeing things that are squarely in the mainstream of their market.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Christensen Levitt Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 14, 2017

How the most innovative providers are creating value. Some firms have managed it, in healthcare and in other arenas — think of QuintilesIMS as a source of pharmaceutical sales data, Nielsen as the authority on TV viewer habits, and the U.S. They address an underlying stakeholder need such as managing the total cost of care.

Health Care 9

Health Care Levitt Pharmaceuticals Competitive Advantage 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 6, 2014

At a fundamental level, the decisions managers make about revenue and profits fall into two categories—those related to growth and those related to cost reduction. Managers use cost-related data as an objective input for decision making, since they consider it both reliable and reasonably predictable. Cost reduction data are precise.

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Disruptive Innovation Levitt Innovation Tools 11

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

In 1960, the editor of the Harvard Business Review, Theodore Levitt, wrote that the failure of railroads could be explained in part by the myopic view that they were in the railroad business and not the transportation business, which left them vulnerable to competition from cars, trucks, and planes.

Health Care 16

Health Care Levitt Film Chemicals 16

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2015

The new products promise to store locally sourced energy and manage its dispatch, helping to mitigate one of the major shortcomings of harvesting power from the sun: the intermittency challenge (in other words, you need the sun to shine). The second has to do with scope.

Strategy 8

Strategy Levitt Energy System 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 15, 2015

I would venture to suggest that this extra factor is the fact that managers in incumbent firms do not focus on their product’s “job-to-be-done.” As HBS’s Ted Levitt pointed out decades ago, people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want something that will make a quarter-inch hole.

Marketing 8

Marketing Company Levitt Film 8

First Friday Book Synopsis

MARCH 2, 2011

After having read and reviewed so many business books, I now share brief comments about what I consider to be the 25 most valuable business insights and the books in which they are either introduced or (one man’s opinion) best explained. Here are the third five: 11. Leadership: In essence, leaders attract followers so that [.].

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Review Books Leadership Mintzberg 85

N2Growth Blog

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Lafley - The former Chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble gave a clinic on innovation. I’ve never heard anyone speak so fluently on the topic of innovation. Steve Levitt - Author of Freakanomics and Super Freakanomics , Steve was superb. Just about every statement that passed his lips was quotable.

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Blog Collins Blue Ocean Strategy Video 353