The Practical Leader

MARCH 13, 2024

Harvard Business School Professor Ted Levitt, a leading research and author in management, marketing, and former editor of Harvard Business Review, said “Early decline and certain death are the fate of companies whose policies are geared totally and obsessively to their own convenience at the total expense of the customer.”

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System Organization Levitt Root Cause Analysis 52

Strategy Driven

MARCH 30, 2011

Pricing Strategy : Setting Price Levels, Managing Price Discounts and Establishing Price Structures by Tim J. The marketing orientation focuses the purpose of the firm towards serving customer needs profitably – an orientation supported by the late greats Peter Drucker and Theodore Levitt. Smith, PhD. About the Author.

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Price Strategy Discount Levitt 50

Mark Sanborn

FEBRUARY 19, 2019

” Theodore Levitt said, “The future belongs to those who see opportunities before they become obvious.” In the process, he became an expert in areas outside his specialty of management. Americans spend more money each year on beer than the do on books. Few people have any formal learning agenda.

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Learning-by-Doing Drucker Levitt Education 72

Harvard Business Review

JULY 11, 2011

It's hard to overestimate the influence Ted Levitt's "Marketing Myopia" has had on the world of marketing and beyond. Why has "Marketing Myopia" lasted so well over a 50-year-period when so many management big ideas have gone the way of the failed industries Levitt cites in his classic? Its clarity and its ambition.

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Levitt Marketing Library Maturity 15

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 29, 2011

Some fifteen years ago, in a period that seemed full of change and uncertainty in marketing, I asked my colleague Ted Levitt where he saw our field heading. Levitt, who had a marvelous talent for speaking in epigrams, responded, "The future of marketing will be more like its past than anyone imagines."

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Levitt Marketing Uncertainty Price 16

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 13, 2014

In 1960, marketing legend Ted Levitt provided perhaps his seminal contribution to the Harvard Business Review : “ Marketing Myopia.” To avoid that, Levitt exhorted leaders to ask themselves the seemingly obvious question – “What business are you really in?” Embrace your organization’s humanity.

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Levitt Christensen Competitive Advantage Welch 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 16, 2012

Harvard Business Review was launched precisely 90 years ago this month with an ambitious agenda — to produce a "business theory," based on rigorous research, to help managers run their companies more effectively. HBR's 90th Anniversary: Why Management Matters. We are also, of course, a business. What Makes a Leader? More >>.

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Levitt Porter Management Metrics 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 18

Health Care Levitt Film Chemicals 18

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 10, 2011

In their hit book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner posit that real estate agents don't have the incentive to push for the highest sales price for homeowners. Levitt and Dubner bolster their claim by citing research that reveals when realtors sell their own homes, they remain on the market one week longer and sell for 3% more.

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Real Estate Levitt Incentives Price 14

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

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 18, 2012

Consider another example made famous in Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. Some managers might dismiss these as token gestures with at best a limited impact. She'd probably have accepted it graciously. The offer of a gift rather than payment indicates that social and not market norms are in play.

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Motivation Levitt Letter Business Objectives 20

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 14, 2017

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. Increasingly, for most HCIT firms, data is a commodity.

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Health Care Levitt Pharmaceuticals Competitive Advantage 13

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 4, 2013

Lazear went on to describe how economists, with the University of Chicago's Gary Becker leading the way , had been running roughshod over the other social sciences — using economic tools to study crime, the family, accounting, corporate management, and countless other not strictly economic topics.

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Tversky Crisis Levitt Consensus 15

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 14

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 20, 2014

“Most people just lower their expectations because it’s easier than dealing with the real issues at hand,” says Brian Uzzi, professor of leadership and organizational change at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and author of the HBR article, “ Make Your Enemies Your Allies.” Conflict Difficult conversations Managing yourself'

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Levitt Price Class Case Study 15

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. . “That’s funny,” Hughes said to himself, his curiosity piqued. Related Video. The Explainer: Marketing Myopia.

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Levitt Video Short-term Learning-by-Doing 10

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.

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Levitt Disaggregation Kaizen Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 26, 2015

With apologies to Ted Levitt , a new “Marketing Myopia 2.0” ” That’s not cynicism; that’s savvy risk management. Your most important customers may not be the people who buy your products but the ones who regulate your company and industry. ” has emerged. May the best lawyers and lobbyists win.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Levitt Tourism Incentives 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 12, 2013

The approach echoes Ted Levitt''s famous comment about selling ¼ inch holes rather than ¼ inch electric drills, and advocates a mindset shift away from selling products to "doing jobs" that solve customers'' problems. To resolve these contradictions, we had begun pleading with students and clients to look for "jobs to be done."

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Ramaswamy Levitt Prahalad Christensen 10

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

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. Creating and managing separate organizations often entails significant investment and management attention, so it makes sense to only do so in specific circumstances.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Christensen Levitt Innovation 8

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

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 26, 2016

Many salespeople (typically a majority in our experience) now cite navigating their own organizations as a bigger challenge than managing customers and clients. But effective training and development should begin with awareness and shelf space in the curriculum: making sure that sales is a topic in management education worthy of the name.

Education 8

Education Levitt Retail Training 8

HR Digest

APRIL 3, 2021

There are concerns among investors about the recovery “It seems to be the recovery [is] happening much more quickly than people thought could possibly move the Fed into a position where they may have to do something sooner rather than later,” Tom di Galoma, a managing director with Seaport Global Holdings, said. percent from near zero. “The

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Levitt Bond Globalization Long-term 69

N2Growth Blog

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Steve Levitt - Author of Freakanomics and Super Freakanomics , Steve was superb. In yesterday’s recap of Day one, I gave a detailed breakdown of each speaker presentation, but today I thought I’d do something a bit different…Since everyone seems to like a list, I decided to rank the top ten speakers from both days.

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Blog Collins Blue Ocean Strategy Video 353