Monday, May 13, 2013

"Outside-in" Thinking - Prof. Ranjay Gulati


Ranjay Gulati is the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.


Companies with an outside-in perspective aim to provide solutions for customers. Those with an inside-out orientation, on the other hand, just focus on products, sales, and the organization.

Customer-centric companies tracked by Gulati between 2001 and 2007 delivered shareholder returns of 150 percent while the S&P 500 delivered 14 percent.

To develop an outside-in orientation, it is essential to translate awareness of a customer issue or problem into action toward solving it and provide the solution to the customer.

Ranjay Gulati:  "I naively assumed that all firms must indeed have an outside-in orientation whereby they put their customers first in all their decisions and actions." After all, that is what business is about and marketing texts and courses promoted it .  But Gulati says "Much to my surprise, I found that this was the exception rather than the rule for most businesses."

More Reading on the Concept and Ranjay Gulati

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6201.html

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-03-02/news/31116805_1_new-guru-customer-gulati

http://www.h-ym.com/articles/Inside%20Outside-In%20WP.pdf

http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/04/inside-best-buys-customer-cent.html

Silobusting - Ranjay Gulati
http://hbr.org/2007/05/silo-busting-how-to-execute-on-the-promise-of-customer-focus/ar/1

"From Inside-out to Outside in thinking" by Ranjay Gulati, HBS professor in Economic Times Corporate Dossier of 10 May 2013

Video
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/video-high-growth-requires-customer-first-thinking/article549998/

Transcript of the video
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/transcript-high-growth-requires-customer-first-thinking/article4171789/

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