Brand

Fixing the Now is fine. But not at the expense of creating the Next. Every day, thousands of very smart people at excellent companies devote vast amounts of time and energy to tasks that feel important but really aren’t. 

Consumers’ perception of value extends far beyond price. Creating value requires companies to have a keen understanding of the explicit and implicit needs they solve for customers; seeing how those needs are evolving and solving them in new and compelling ways.

Is DTC really dead? Not yet. The big challenge isn’t the direct-to-consumer model itself. It’s the way it’s being implemented—and that’s a very solvable problem.

For a while, the world’s biggest companies found success by focusing on a medium price and quality point. In Forbes, Dev Patnaik outlines the three big shifts that have disrupted this middle-market strategy, and how to move from “how to win” to “where to play” in order to unlock new growth.

Unilever’s decision to spin off Ben & Jerry’s along with its ice cream business has fed the misconception of “Go woke and go broke.” The real lesson to take away from the split is the opposite—that purpose pays—and it’s more important than ever to be future-focused in order to grow.

Across industries, leaders are recognizing that they can’t achieve outsize growth simply by drumming up mass demand through product innovation and new loyalty programs. In this article, Dev Patnaik explains how the rise of microtribes and niche preferences necessitates a fundamentally new approach to innovation.