To me, this seems an academic great wall of china to keep the barbarian of innovation at bay. Focusing my effort in consumer packaged goods on these pillars might be one of the reasons McKinsey reports that despite healthy balance sheets and solid bottom lines executives in packaged goods manufacturing firms wonder where their growth will come from. Are not these principals self-evident? Am I not spending too much time looking inward?

Is there not higher fruit than the need to be a better salesperson/negotiator for my company? Are there problems in a company that can't be solved by a great new product? And who uses this information? In firms such as Kraft, if you preach sales to marketing personnel they point to 'that department over there'. If you preach negotiating to advertising people, they point to the creative department; which is why advertising no longer sells; it more serves only to generate awareness and recognition in aging categories where rivals converge on the same positions, saying the same things differently. Show me a detergent that doesn't somehow claim to do the cleaning job better and faster. Tell me how to better negotiate prices with suppliers whose relationships have existed for decades with firms like ADM. Show me the upstart new supplier that can meet my needs with more nimble supply chain response on a global basis. No one has the clout to wade into the fight. Which is what is wrong with with the airline industry. This is all great, in theory. But this seems more like a reality TV version of what I should be doing in business rather than the actuality of what is done in business. The highlight I pulled was the glossed over word of positioning, to which I would add the need to Perceptually Monopolize a category using this newly discovered intellectual property to reverse the effects of mature product lifecycles and turn mature earnings companies back into rapid growth businesses.

very good
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla MBA PhD
P.O.Box 6044
Dar-Es-Salaam
Tanzania
East Africa