Even as the global economic crisis begins to ease, managers everywhere are still facing the most turbulent market conditions since the Great Depression. Focusing on creatively delivering something of value to customers--instead of doggedly pushing a rigid portfolio of products and services--makes a company inherently more responsive to market shifts; a competence that's especially important when firms must be prepared to radically alter what they sell and how they sell it.
Not every company will necessarily need or want to shift their perspective to an "outside-in" orientation, but in companies that already experience dynamic interdependence between units or where customer dynamism necessitates sophisticated and flexible responses, outside-in thinking is the ultimate goal--and the way to keep companies healthy.
The question isn't "What can you do for me with what you have?" The question is "How can you meet my needs?" Period.
Organizations that answer that question satisfactorily, are the most likely to escape the commodity trap. They maintain an outside-in perspective on their business, putting themselves in customers' shoes and forging strategic, seamless partnerships with multiple groups: suppliers that can provide key solution components or perform important functions; allies that offer complementary products and services; and even customers themselves, which get involved in developing the very offerings they buy.
This calls for a firm to integrate itself with numerous players that provide key inputs, while at the same time orchestrating the multiple outputs needed to serve the customer. Truly resilient, customer-centric firms must use the first four levers--coordination, cooperation, clout and capabilities--to dissolve boundaries between their own internal silos even as they forge connections to external partners.
The fifth lever, connections, helps companies achieve sustainable customer-centricity by leveraging the extraordinary value of effective partners. For instance, Apple only offers a small number of applications for its iPhone but because of its partners, it can offer ten thousand applications.
Firms offload noncore activities to strategic partners so they can focus on the activities that give them the sharpest competitive edge, or they partner with key allies to provide offerings that, when combined with their own products and services, deliver even more value to customers.
No product, service or function is so "sacred" that it must be kept inhouse. By codeveloping products through tightly integrated relationships, successful companies and their allies have cultivated long-term relationships with the most important partner of all: the customer.
Source: Ranjay Gulati: Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business Through interviews with more than 500 executives over a decade of boom-and-bust economic cycles, author Gulati uncovered five key levers that pry open silos, expand mindsets, build partnerships and help an organization recognize and shift internal barriers to move toward ongoing resilience.