Strategic planning

By Fiona Czerniawska.

It’s decades since Theordore Levitt wrote about what he terms “marketing myopia”, the extent to which people and organisations underestimated the potential size of their market because they viewed it through a narrow, pre-determined lens. If you’re trying to sell screws, the problem is not that every solution is a screw but that you only see screw-related opportunities: there’s a bigger market out there, if only you saw it as fixture-related.

I was reminded of this idea recently when talking to a client about how the wTheordore Levittay in which they use professional services may change in the future. A wide-ranging discussion ended up with both him and me realising that we needed to see the market differently, through a different lens if you like.

Though we’re reluctant to admit it, you could buy 9.7 million data points about the global consulting market from us, and still be missing something.