just wait and see

reading through “Who says Elephants can’t Dance” I noticed that Gerstner offered some awesome credentials for both products and businesses that are successful.

Firstly on products, he mentioned briefly that they need to be competitive on cost, features and functionality. I believe this can be extended to include a fourth category “personality“. With these four categories I believe every product and service can be measured and compared, obviously different weights would be given to each category depending on the industry (different petrol can hardly be more functional) but a weighted average of these relative to other products would give universal ratings.

Subheadings for these are needed, I’m assuming cost would need to include externalities and social costs for example (measurement in these is always a problem). Will think more on these later.

Next Gerstner mentioned skills of businesses that are likely to be successful share the following characteristics:

• Correct Focus: Broad focus leads to no specialisation and narrow focus ignores the business environment.
• Flawless execution: which include world class processes, clarity in their strategy and high performance culture.
• Personal leadership.