Kaihan Krippendorff - Kaihan Krippendorff

Co-Creating Customer Strategy: Notes from Outthinker’s NYC Advisory Session

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This audio was recorded by an AI program. Last month, in New York City, Outthinker Networks members convened a select group of seasoned strategy leaders who have expertise in customer-related functions (marketing, customer experience [CX], go-to-market, strategy, etc.) to co-create ideas for a new customer-related thought leadership platform. It was a pleasure engaging with a […]

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Leading in a Polarized World: Insights from Outthinker Networks’ Roundtable with Oxford’s Karthik Ramanna

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This audio was recorded by an AI program. What does it take to lead in a polarized world? This month at Outthinker Networks, our community of chief strategy officers and innovation leaders met with Karthik Ramanna, professor of business and public policy at Oxford University and author of The Age of Outrage: How to Lead

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Level Up: Turn Work Into a Game

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This audio was recorded by an AI program. There’s an important shift happening in the way businesses approach success. Employees have become the new customers. I talked about the shift in a recent article (“The Evolution of Strategy: From Competition to Customers to Employees”). Organizational leaders can no longer treat their employees as secondary to

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A Hidden Key to Growth: Unlocking Your Channel Strategy

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Many rapidly scaled companies won through channel strategy – finding or creating a new path to the customer. Consider Dell. They decided to sell PCs directly to consumers, bypassing traditional retailers. Salesforce delivered a customer relationship management (CRM) platform via the cloud, avoiding on-premises installations. Apple opened its own stores, reducing its dependence on third-party

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Transform from Bureaucracy to Entrepreneurialism in 3 Simple Steps

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This audio was recorded by an AI program. I’m just back from my second visit in the last month to Qingdao, China, where I attended an award ceremony conference that Haier calls the Zero Distance Awards. In addition to enjoying the beer (also called Qingdao) and seafood the city is known for, I got to

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How to Spot the Future Before it Arrives

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The following is an updated version of a post that was originally published in 2016. It is so easy to miss! When the future was lobbing softballs at you, you could hit the trends every time. But now the future has upped its game. It’s throwing fastballs and curveballs. Who would’ve predicted five years ago

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My Surprising Visit to a Washing Machine Factory

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Click here to listen to an AI recording of this post. I just returned from an exciting trip to Qingdao, China. In addition to eating brains and snails, I saw something that blew my mind when I visited a Haier washing machine factory. To the common observer, the process to create the appliances simply looks

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Is Your Company Really Customer-Centric?

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“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” – Steve Jobs This audio was recorded by an AI program. I just got back from China for a special research visit to Haier, the leading appliances manufacturer, and I had the realization that

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The 5 X 5 X 5 Experiment

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The following post was originally published in 2015. Here is the fundamental issue: innovation seems too risky. Your company says they want it. They hold innovation events, call “innovation” a top priority, and build internal innovation teams. But no one, even the most admired innovators, is confident their efforts are paying off. Perhaps we fundamentally

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The Evolution of Strategy: From Competition to Customers to Employees

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This audio was recorded by an AI program. In the 1980s, business strategy was dominated by competition. Michael Porter introduced the concept of competitive advantage. Strategists and business leaders became obsessed with differentiating their business from the competition by taking market share and becoming, as General Electric famously was, number one or number two in

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