The Discipline of Market Leaders identifies three primary value disciplines – operational excellence, product leadership, and customer intimacy – that companies can focus on to achieve market leadership by delivering superior value to customers.
Primary Implication
Trying to be all things to all people to generate sales distracts you from investing the time and resources necessary to completely understand who buys your product and, more importantly, why they decide to buy it.
Overview
In the book Discipline of Market Leaders, by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, they describe how customers search for operational excellence, product leadership, or customer intimacy as three sources of value.
- Operational Excellence is process-centric and operationally competent. Their focus is BEST TOTAL COST.
- Product Leadership is knowledge-centric and product differentiation. Their focus is BEST PRODUCT.
- Customer Intimacy is relationship-centric and customer responsive. Their focus is BEST TOTAL SOLUTION.
The source of value creation a business elects to build from defines the company’s strategic style and, in BusinessCPR™ terms, its profit model.
