needs, some of which might involve making a purchase. When the chain breaks down, is unsatisfying, or is less convenient than that offered by a competitor, a company can be at a competitive disadvantage. Choice of customer segment, based on behavioral differences, is key. The goal is to improve the customers’ total experience, thus improving margins, revenue opportunity and loyalty. Examples might include Amazon.com, Coinstar, and the Kone Corporation.

For any given customer segment, every product and service has some attributes (or features) that that segments regards as positive, some they regard as neutral, and some they don’t care about at all. By understanding the tradeoffs customers are willing to make, companies can better tailor their offerings to the needs of specific segments, often adding positive elements and reducing cost in the process. This session introduces a simple tool, the attribute map, to help companies gain a better understanding of the reaction of specific customers to the attributes of an offer and potentially redesign the offer. Examples could include business-focused hotels, diabetes treatment and car rentals. If desired, we can also use the tool to speculate on current product competitions, such as that for e-readers.

In many industries, competition is not so much between different industry participants as it is between different business models. With the advent of on-line music, for instance, the CD-based business model is losing share to the by-the-song-online business model. In this session, participants will be provoked to consider whether it is time to explore a new business model. The issue focuses on two interrelated questions: Can the unit of business be changed (what you sell) or can the operational activities that deliver a unit of business be altered? Changes in unit of business might involve selling products as services or subscriptions rather than by the unit, while changes in key metrics might involve reconfiguring (sometimes drastically) how operations take place to generate efficiencies or customer differentiation. Examples might include GE’s locomotive operation, Mexican concrete producer Cemex, Provide Commerce ProFlowers offer and Software as a service as opposed to on-premises operations.

Industries go through different types of changes that can, to some extent be anticipated. Step changes are sudden and irreversible. Cyclical changes are those that appear and then reverse themselves. Trends are slower, but significant. Value chain shifts result in changing power relationships among buyers and suppliers in an industry. This workshop will ask participants to identify key shifts that they can foresee in their industries, and then to consider one of three possible responses: anticipating and preparing for the change; benefitting from second-order effects or even provoking a change themselves.

Slow shifts in underlying social, technological and other forces can sometimes create the opportunity to explore entirely new markets. In this session, we’ll explore some of the ways in which new categories, capabilities, and needs emerge to create a fruitful ground for opportunity. The practice of developing early warnings of a new category evolving can be used.