Nilofer Merchant

Thoughts on Apple’s 3G iPhone announcement

Apple’s 3G iPhone announcement on June 9 was probably the minimum necessary to please the Apple community. The real news was the things that weren’t announced: No tablet device (again). No major changes to the form factor of the iPhone….


Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type: BusinessWeek’s Sarah Lacy Gets SaaS

In today’s Rough Type, Nicholas Carr comments about Sarah Lacy’s latest Businessweek article on SaaS. Turns out, as we see from Microsoft’s inability to turn a profit in this area, the frenzy of SaaS activity may be lemmings to the…


Nilofer Merchant's Blog


Strategy Failure = Strategy Creation Process Gone Awry

July 18, 2008

We've all seen it - the company that makes a play for new customers and finds they've targeted incorrectly. The product launch that fizzles. A big rebranding move that ends up being underwhelming. Is strategy failure due to poor leadership,...

Nilofer Merchant on July 18, 2008
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Don't Miss the Middle When Formulating Strategy

July 14, 2008

What purpose does middle management serve in strategy development? Misunderstandings between the C-suite and middle management lead to bad decisions, loss of time and loss of money. Many organizations have flattened management structures. Those that haven't are working on it....

Nilofer Merchant on July 14, 2008
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Who Owns Strategy? We All Do.

June 27, 2008

A couple weeks back, I was teaching a course at Santa Clara University for their high tech marketing program, when a bright young product manager asked me a question. In a room filled with engineers and a handful of...

Nilofer Merchant on June 27, 2008
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Listen to the Oppressed

February 11, 2008

The people who are the troublemakers in the organization. The people on the front lines of the service phone calls. The sales people who haven’t made their number. Those people are not considered worthy of ‘the list’. And yet they often have a perspective worth listening to.

Nilofer Merchant on February 11, 2008
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Amen, Brother

February 8, 2008

"Don't envy your competitors; this has done more for hurting AMD than anything Intel could do to us."

Nilofer Merchant on February 8, 2008
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Week in Review: Spotlight on Key Ideas

November 11, 2007

Staying on top of some latest news, moves, thinking. Things worth paying attention to including FaceBook, Google, Landor Brand Study, & Amazon's Strategy.

Nilofer Merchant on November 11, 2007
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Facebook enables Brand Affinity To Take place

November 6, 2007

Facebook now will give advertisers the ability to create their own profile pages on its system that will let users identify themselves as fans of a product. Let's users (and the advocates amongst those users) show their beliefs, feelings, perhaps even needs. And with it, brand owners would choose to place their advertising dollars here as compared to the other companies.

Nilofer Merchant on November 6, 2007
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Okay, here's a Statistic

November 4, 2007

So Bain has done a growth survey that shows "senior managers spend less than 3% of their time on the long term view of the future." In comparison, the same study shows, they "spend 40% of their time focused on the things that go on in the 4 walls of the company".

Nilofer Merchant on November 4, 2007
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Anticipation ...

November 4, 2007

Persistent rumors that Google is launching a mobile "platform" based on open business models could culminate tomorrow, November 4, 2007. Here's the link "href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20071103/tc_pcworld/139240" I found. Bunches more online this afternoon so I have to believe that something BIG is...

Nilofer Merchant on November 4, 2007
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Marvel Story

November 2, 2007

Marvel Comics used to sell comic books. That was their business. They created comics, they sold them in the form of books. Then, one day, they realize that the real asset isn't the publishing business. Which is what they had directly built. What they had indirectly built is characters that had stories. And those were assets.

Nilofer Merchant on November 2, 2007
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