From the Back Cover
Praise for The Death of Demand
"Every once in a while, a book comes along that makes you rethink yourbasic notions about the world around you. This is one of those books." --Seth Godin, Author, Purple Cow
"In plain English, Osenton provides a truly unique perspective of the global economy's half-century journey to undreamed of outputs since World War II. More importantly, he sheds new insight on the inescapable dilemma that all businesses face today: survival and growth in a maturing economy." --Norma V. Rosenberg, Former Director, Global Strategy Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers
We have more TVs than viewers. More phone numbers than talkers. More homes than households. More cars than drivers. Corporations have pushed for more, and consumers have gorged themselves ... and now they're starting to pull away from the table. Demand is dead. The culprit: the generations of managers at the world's greatest corporations who did their jobs so well they hastened the onset of saturation.
In The Death of Demand, Tom Osenton reveals that all successful corporations enjoyed 25 to 30 years of increasing rates of revenue growth coming out of World War II. Then all of a sudden it stopped--hitting a wall in the mid-1970s when revenue growth rates started decreasing. Corporations that once consistently grew at double-digit levels now more often post low single-digit revenue gains at best. And that trend won't change.
Starting with a foundation of clarity and realism, Osenton explains why all sectors of the economy--even technology--have already seen their best days, and why, for the first time ever, no sector of the economy is growing at increasing rates. Osenton sheds new light on the serious implications that lack of demand has on:
- Corporations
- How will they adapt to the new economic reality that produces little or no growth?
- CEOs
- How can the 21st century CEO deliver long-term shareowner value with flagging demand?
- Shareowners
- Can they expect the value of their investments to increase with limits to productivity?
- Employees
- Will they pay for increased shareowner value with their jobs?
- Governments
- Can unemployment levels stabilize in an economic environment that lacks demand?
Are we victims of our own success?
- How much more can consumers consume?
- Can corporations perpetually increase shareowner value with limited revenue growth?
- Can human capital continue to fuel earnings growth?
- How will diminishing demand impact the future of equity markets?
- Can any stimulus package stir demand in a saturated economy?
Consumers can only drive so many cars, eat so many burgers, and talk on so many cell phones. Mergers and acquisitions, zero-percent financing, and other temporary measures only hide the hard reality. In one industry after another, companies are coming up against inexorable limits on demand. Year after year, they're failing to achieve top-line growth targets, because those targets are simply no longer achievable--and now we know why.
In The Death of Demand, transformational management consultant Tom Osenton systematically demonstrates why the world is at the end of one long-wave business cycle and the beginning of the next. Osenton offers the first comprehensive understanding of one of the most important economic theories since demand and supply. The Law of Innovation Saturation dispels the myth of unlimited growth, and impacts every product, in every corporation, in every industry, in every economy in the world.
About the Author
Tom Osenton is a best-selling author, columnist, speaker, and leading business strategist with years of senior management level experience at world-class organizations such as the ABC Television Network, Times Mirror Company, Billboard Publications, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He is the author of the best-selling Customer Share Marketing: How The World's Great Marketers Unlock Profits From Customer Loyalty (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2002). This seminal business title introduced the discipline of customer share marketing: the art of retaining customers and increasing the number of products and services they purchase. He speaks extensively on the subject at conferences, seminars, corporate meetings, workshops, and business schools worldwide.
After working on three Olympic Games as part of the broadcast team at the ABC television network, Osenton was appointed the youngest-ever President, CEO, and Publisher of The Sporting News Publishing Company in the late 1980s, where he led a major turnaround of the nation's first sports weekly. He is now CEO of the Customer Share Group LLC, a leading management consultancy advising global corporations on transformational growth strategies. He can be reached directly at tosenton@customershare.com.
