| home
> case studies
> harvard bidness school
By Jim Carey, Core Strategies
My partner went to Harvard Business
School. It doesn't come up much around
the office ... if you don't count weekdays.
Harvard is the school to go to if you're
going to run a big, industrial company.
On the other hand, I had what could be
politely be called a "checkered"
academic career. It's a distinguished,
but fading, tradition in direct marketing.
(On the advice of my attorney, I don't
recall anything between 1968 and 1975.)
So I've been forced to get my learning
on the fly. It's a mindset that works
well for us as direct marketers. We're
not dogmatic... we're experimenters open
to new ideas. We immediately look for
the commercial applications of new innovations.
We try things just for fun, and then we
watch the results like hawks. And, "It's
worth a test," is actually a winning
strategy in turbulent times.
What We Can Teach Harvard
In the rock-n-roll business environment
we live in, being able to think like this
actually has significant advantages over
classic B-school theories. Because the
world ain't static, it not U.S. Steel
no more. In fact, the world is changing
so fast, the theories can keep up.
So amazingly, we direct marketers have
a better grip on how to exploit what's
happening than many brand name MBA's stuck
in old order orthodoxies. We deserve to
be proud of that. Like Dizzy Dean said,
"It ain't braggin' if you done it."
What Harvard Can Teach Us
But there are also a few things that
we can learn from Harvard Business School.
They may understand the global implications
of our strategies better than we DM'ers
do. For instance, they saw how e-commerce
is really paperless mail order on steroids,
and they made billions. (I didn't.)
And they're smart enough to translate
our axiom about mailing the house list
into great thinking about customer loyalty.
Check out Fred Reichheld's work on loyalty
- it's good thinking, but we DM'ers already
knew that profits come from repeat business
of satisfied customers. So why did he
write the article in "Harvard Business
Review," and not one of us? And why
do Fortune 100 CEO's pay attention to
Fred, and not us? That's a game we all
still need to master.
How Chicago Can Rule the World
One of Harvard's stars, Michael Porter,
writes about competition. In The Competitive
Advantage of Nations, he asks how local
industries can dominate world markets.
Why are the German so good at chemicals?
The Italians at shoes? The Swiss at optics?
The Japanese at cars? For that matter,
the Americans at movies?
Porter concludes that great international
businesses grow out of intense local competitive
environments. Sinatra was right, "If
can you make it there, you can make it
anywhere." I'd like to think that
the same potential is true for us in Chicago.
There are really only two candidates for
the world capital for direct marketing
-- Chicago and a city back East.
Our winning advantage, and one that we
truly can leverage, will come if we can
cooperate as much as we compete. The B-school
guys call it "co-opetition."
So if you can make it here, you can make
it anywhere.
That's something that I hope the CADM
can do for us … to be a clearinghouse
for best practices, and a place where
we can share insights about how to grow
businesses today and tomorrow.
It's a challenge worthy of all our talents.
Let's do it.
|
