Two top specialists in profitable growth and innovative customer-supplier relationships show companies of all sizes how to compete with the tech giants—by choosing and providing peerless value to the right customers for long-term success. Every year, managers at companies large and small are finding it harder to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, who are muscling into their businesses, stealing their customers, and cornering every conceivable market and service. There is, however, a way for companies to survive—and win—in this era of digital behemoths. Choose Your Customer is a powerful, consumer-targeted guide that can help managers level the playing field against their biggest competitors. Written by Jonathan Byrnes, the legendary MIT-based expert on profits, pricing, and strategy, and John Wass, a key member of the team that made Staples a major national brand, Choose Your Customer shows managers how to: Identify the customers who are the most profitable—and focus on them. Provide services and experiences that can’t be replicated by the tech giants, no matter how much data they have, or how much automation they use. Support your chosen customers’ diverse and rapidly evolving needs to accelerate profitability and growth. These customer-driven strategies enable leaders to build a uniquely targeted business that the digital giants just can’t match. From unbeatable customer service to superior pricing and product selection, Choose Your Customer provides detailed and actionable advice on how to compete successfully with the big guys and how to increase profits as a result.

Which kinds of companies will thrive and which will get crushed by the powerful forces in the global business landscape now at work? This groundbreaking new guide will help you adapt and change your business to thrive among digital giants, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Drawing on considerable original research and case studies from Wang’s acclaimed firm, Constellation Research, this groundbreaking guide reveals which kinds of companies will thrive and which will get crushed by the powerful forces now at work. Ultimately, you will understand how the business world is changing in the face of extreme competition and, most importantly, you will learn how to adapt now to stay relevant and in demand. Everybody Wants to Rule the World will help you: Understand the power of Data-Driven Digital Networks and how they have driven the most successful companies of our time. Learn how extreme consolidation is changing the global business landscape and what this means for businesses of all types and sizes in terms of understanding where you fit in the value chain. Gain insights into what innovative companies are doing right now to position themselves in this new reality. Take your business from status quo to market leader.

Companies around the world turn to MIT's Jonathan Byrnes for one reason: he can figure out where the profit is. He shows them which customers and businesses are cash cows, and which efforts are just a drain on resources. Most astonishingly, in each case he finds that roughly 40% of his client's businesses are unprofitable. We are transitioning from an era of mass markets to the Age of Precision Markets. Before, companies sought to distribute their products as widely as possible using arm's-length customer relationships. Broad metrics like aggregate revenues and costs were adequate. But today companies form different relationships with different sets of customers. Successful businesses create competitive advantages and sustained profitability by developing innovative relationships and new types of value. This is a double-edged sword: if customers are matched with the right relationships, sales and profits soar...but if they are matched poorly, profitability plunges. Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink tells you how to rethink your business for maximum profit - what to do, what difficulties you'll encounter, and how to overcome them. This book gives you the roadmap and tools you'll need to be a highly effective manager in a new era of business.

Surf the waves of change. We are no longer an economy of products and services. The digital transformation demands that we focus our attention on experiences and outcomes. Business leaders and their organizations must shift to keeping promises—no matter how their customers interact with them. But organizations no longer control the conversation. In this era of social and mobile technology, customers, employees, suppliers, and partners are in direct communication with one another. Those personal networks and the brands they’re passionate about influence their decision making and their spending. The workforce has changed too. Employees expect to be able to determine when and how they will work, the technology they’ll use, and the values their company will espouse. Organizations can take part in this conversation only if they recognize how and where it’s happening. Resisting these changes will leave executives, managers, and their companies powerless. Organizations must pivot with and ahead of these social, organizational, and technological shifts or risk being left behind. Technology guru Ray Wang shows how organizations can surf the waves of change—how they can keep their promises. Current trends, when taken seriously, require a new way of thinking about business that includes five key areas: 1. Consumerization of technology and the new C-suite 2. Data’s influence in driving decisions 3. Digital marketing transformation 4. The future of work 5. Matrix commerce Digital disruption has changed how we do our work. But by mastering these trends you’ll delight your customers with every interaction.

How to succeed in an era of ecosystem-based disruption: strategies and tools for offense, defense, timing, and leadership in a changing competitive landscape. The basis of competition is changing. Are you prepared? Rivalry is shifting from well-defined industries to broader ecosystems: automobiles to mobility platforms; banking to fintech; television broadcasting to video streaming. Your competitors are coming from new directions and pursuing different goals from those of your familiar rivals. In this world, succeeding with the old rules can mean losing the new game. Winning the Right Game introduces the concepts, tools, and frameworks necessary to confront the threat of ecosystem disruption and to develop the strategies that will let your organization play ecosystem offense. To succeed in this world, you need to change your perspective on competition, growth, and leadership. In this book, strategy expert Ron Adner offers a new way of thinking, illustrating breakthrough ideas with compelling cases. How did a strategy of ecosystem defense save Wayfair and Spotify from being crushed by giants Amazon and Apple? How did Oprah Winfrey redraw industry boundaries to transition from television host to multimedia mogul? How did a shift to an alignment mindset enable Microsoft's cloud-based revival? Each was rooted in a new approach to competitors, partners, and timing that you can apply to your own organization. For today's leaders the difference between success and failure is no longer simply winning, but rather being sure that you are winning the right game.

This text shows how to use the Internet to keep customers, increase sales, and improve profits. It offers practical, easy-to-understand and apply advice based on proven marketing principles and on real, detailed case-studies of how well-known corporations are using the Internet successfully.

How to compete in a world dominated by tech giants. A new breed of monopolies is threatening your business. Tech mega-firms from around the world are encroaching on your industry's space, rewriting the rules, and scooping up talent--and your customers. What should you and your company be doing right now to counter these challenges? Monopolies and Tech Giants: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will provide you with today's most essential thinking on corporate inequality and the future of antitrust, help you understand what these threats mean for your organization, and give your company the tools to succeed in the winner-take-all economy. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues--blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more--each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas--and prepare you and your company for the future.