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The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers
 
 
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The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers [Hardcover]

C. K. Prahalad (Author), Venkat Ramaswamy (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)

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Book Description

1578519535 978-1578519538 February 18, 2004
In this visionary book, C. K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy explore why, despite unbounded opportunities for innovation, companies still can't satisfy customers and sustain profitable growth. The explanation for this apparent paradox lies in recognizing the structural changes brought about by the convergence of industries and technologies; ubiquitous connectivity and globalization; and, as a consequence, the evolving role of the consumer from passive recipient to active co-creator of value. Managers need a new framework for value creation. Increasingly, individual customers interact with a network of firms and consumer communities to co-create value. No longer can firms autonomously create value. Neither is value embedded in products and services per se. Products are but an artifact around which compelling individual experiences are created. As a result, the focus of innovation will shift from products and services to experience environments that individuals can interact with to co-construct their own experiences. These personalized co-creation experiences are the source of unique value for consumers and companies alike.

In this emerging opportunity space, companies must build new strategic capital--a new theory on how to compete. This book presents a detailed view of the new functional, organizational, infrastructure, and governance capabilities that will be required for competing on experiences and co-creating unique value. C. K. Prahalad is the Harvey C. Fruehauf Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan Business School and co-author of the landmark best seller, Competing for the Future. His research, for over twenty years, has consistently focused on "next" practices. Venkat Ramaswamy is the Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Fellow of Electronic Business and Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan Business School. His research focuses on new frontiers in co-creating value.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to this turgid volume of business metaphysics, dwindling profit margins caused by intensified competition, a glut of commodity production and knowledgeable, web-empowered consumers will usher in "a new industrial system" characterized by "co-creating value through personalized experiences unique to the individual consumer." Under the new regime, headstrong consumers will "seek to exercise their influence in every part of the business system," and companies will accommodate them by, for example, allowing them to design their own individualized cosmetics and houseboats (an innovation whose benefits include "emotional bonding with... the company" and "a greater degree of self-esteem"). Rather than simply selling their products and services, companies will design "experience environments" that comfort the consumer in any contingency, such as General Motors' On-Star satellite communications system, which can summon help after an accident, open the car doors if the driver is locked out and direct motorists to the nearest Italian restaurant. Beneath the avant-garde terminology, the book mostly boils down to a medley of strategies to make business more consumer-friendly, like flexible pricing schemes, electronic gadgets that are easy to use instead of baffling, options and add-ons, meticulous market research and lavish customer service and support. But business professors Ramaswamy and Prahalad, coauthor of Competing for the Future, inflate this rather familiar "customer-is-king" approach to a level of abstraction and mystification-the health-care industry, for instance, is actually "a complex, evolving wellness space"-that is needlessly opaque and portentous. Managers who thought their job was to make or do something that people might want to buy will be scratching their heads over this book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"...an excellent new book." -- Fortune, January 2004

"...an important book, full of disruptive ideas." -- BusinessWeek, March 1, 2004

"Intriguing." -- Detroit Free Press, 27 January 2004

"The book's many examples cast a convincing spell that co-creation is the wave of the future." -- The Globe and Mail, April 14, 2004

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (February 18, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1578519535
  • ISBN-13: 978-1578519538
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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27 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
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36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars New framework, new jargon, but nothing else is new, March 30, 2004
This review is from: The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers (Hardcover)
The future is here. Competition is getting tougher and customers are more difficult to please. On the other hand everything is connected, objects are embedded with sensors and software and information flows instantly to all corners of the world , thanks to the communications revolution. This book essentially looks at a networked world where customers and companies are inseparable and are constantly in interaction. In this paradigm, the framework of DART - Dialogue, Access, Risk Assessment and Transparency is introduced and the book proceeds to explain each of these in detail.

The word Co-creation will get included in your daily vocabulary sooner than you expect. Lots of diagrams and case studies are thrown into every chapter. But frankly, there is no concept that is radically different from some of the pioneering works on similar topics already published. To list a few :

-Customer.Com by Particia Seybold
-How to Grow when Markets Don't by Adrian Slywotzky
-The Innovator's solution by Clayton Christensen
-Adapt or Die : Turning your Supply Chain into an Adaptive Business Network by Bob Betts , Claus Heinrich
-Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation by Stephen Thomke
-Priceless: Turning Ordinary Products into Extraordinary Experiences by Diana Lasalle, Terry A. Britton
-The Agenda: What Every Business must do to Dominate the Decade by Michael Hammer

Most of the case studies in this book are repetitions from these or are similar in concepts or processes in creating value for ( or along with) the customer. The authors have duly acknowledged and referred to an elaborate list of books and articles under "Aids to Exploration". But my point is that after going through some of the key works listed above, this book fails to impress on originality.

Towards the end of the book, Knowledge Management is brought in as one of the strategic tools that can be integrated into the co-creation framework.

It is certainly interesting to go through the book though it is a combination of old ideas in a new packaging. Young MBAs will find lots of new jargon that can be put to profitable use in job interviews.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars a real disappointment, April 5, 2004
This review is from: The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers (Hardcover)
I was left with the feeling that all of this has been said before in one form or another, Where it was ' new' there are other who have already explored the space ( eg The Suport Economy by Shoshana Zuboff) There are two many big words hidding little concepts. The case studies are simplistic and look to the past rather than casting light on the future. This will be another 'fad" and like all fads find its place in the dustbins of business books
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Content good, style weak, April 3, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers (Hardcover)
The content of this "text" is rich with pointers for those who will format strategic decisions in the future. However, it would seem to challenge the reader to probe the true value of the writers. As the reviewer from Dallas infers, the message is there but the packaging leaves something to be desired. As a university professor who teaches strategic thinking, I see this book as one of the reasons that executives and MBA students resist reading academic pieces: the task is greater than the payoff!!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
A PROFOUND, BUT SILENT, transformation of our society is afoot. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
new strategic capital, experience enablers, rapid resource reconfiguration, nodal firm, wellness space, thematic communities, rapid knowledge creation, nodal company, social enablers, experience quality management, new competitive space, experience network, value creation process, consumer heterogeneity, competence base, experience innovation, consumer communities, embedded intelligence, value extraction, experience environment, managerial environment, consumer experiences, knowledge environment, heterogeneous lot, personalized experience
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Buckman Labs, General Motors, Lego Mindstorms, Bob Buckman, General Electric, Los Alamos, Bell Canada, Six Sigma, Electronic Arts
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