The economic story of Africa is poised to change with much larger economies now possible and a prolonged growth phase following in its wake. This creates substantial opportunity for western multinationals. But to take advantage of that growth, you have to begin moving now if you haven’t already. And that movement has to be meaningful in nature and scope, as well as de-risked to the best of your ability. Those who are late to the game or who fail to invest in a substantive and focused way create a different risk – low focus and underinvestment never creates leadership and playing catch-up once you’ve fallen behind in emerging markets remains extremely difficult...
New product and service commercialization efforts fail all the time. Companies get excited about innovation opportunities, become focused on somewhat arbitrary milestones they want to hit and believe internal knowledge (which there tends to be a lot of) is substantial enough to navigate the market. They rush to get a product to market - one doomed from the start. To avoid similar missteps, it is imperative that you pause early in the process and consider the following four things first. You need to make sure that your product solves an actual need, occupies a meaningful position within the market, has a solid and achievable plan and goals, and that you identify the means to evangelize lead customers...
Although some of them haven’t yet reached the legal drinking age, Millennials are turning the wine industry on its head. Why? Simply put, Millennials drink more wine than anybody else in the country. In 2015, Millennials consumed 159.6 million cases of wine alone, a figure that accounts for a whopping forty-two percent of the wine consumption in the entire nation. To put that in perspective, that’s about 23 bottles of wine per Millennial per year (not even discounting for the underage ones). Their per capita consumption is exceptionally high...
The biggest reason for product failure tends to be lack of customer and market-centricity. Said differently, companies often excel at building technically competent products and services but fail to do so in the context of what the market actually values. We see this time-and-again, including in instances where we are called on to diagnose and course-correct failed new product and service introductions. While such course-correction is often possible, it is a far more complex and challenging solution than integrating rigorous product and market testing into the development cycle...
