Many companies are in the process of reinventing themselves to remain competitive in today’s difficult marketplace. The printing, publishing and allied creative design fields are no strangers to this process by any means. To be successful in reengineering a company I have found that before corporate leaders start imagining new directions it’s essential to determine how their customers think of them and build from their impressions:
- Product leader?
- Fast follower?
- Business process innovation leading to high bursts of branding
- Often following and not ever making the A Grade
Each of these are strong positions a company can adopt and one is not necessarily better than the other. In fact, the business graveyard is filled with companies who thought they had a great idea but it came too soon. Then entered a new fast follower that dominated the market. Remember Publish or PageMaker or even Quark to a large degree? Me neither, at least not so much today. But how about the Adobe Creative Suite 4 family? The important thing to remember are those who will be purchasing your products. Ensure that your products and services provide them with what they want or they will find another solution. Customers are like that.
