Articles

Strategy and Tactics

Acquire a better understanding of your clients, of your core competencies and of the marketing and business opportunities available to you.

• Strategic Innovation
  Strategy is about doing things differently from the competition. The article describes a method for developing an unorthodox strategy, enabling those who follow it to obtain major growth, and increasing the size of the entire market.
  
  
• Blue Oceans in Israel
  Examples of Israeli companies that dared to apply highly original strategies, and enjoyed significant growth by providing real "value-innovation" to their clients
  
  
• "The Number" - How much do you want to earn?  
  Why is it important to set a financial goal to your business activity, and how you should do it.
  
  
• Strategic Pricing  
  Is pricing a tactical or a strategic issue? Who should dictate the pricing of your products and services? How do you know what should be the right pricing  policy according to business and marketing strategy? What pricing will let you to grow and increase your revenues in your market?
  
  
• Cash Cows and Stars
  What business should you invest more in, what other businesses can you milk to get the funds you need, and what businesses should you not invest in? And how should you deal with the emotional toll that it takes on managers?
  
  
• Brands or merchandise?
  When does a brand become a commodity? How does it happen? And what are the important strategic implications that you need to know and take advantage of?
  
  
• When and how should you change industries?
  If your current industry is too competitive and crowded, it may be time to work with new markets. This article offers several alternatives for entering a new market.
  
  
• How to avoid the success trap?
  This article describes the problems and challenges stemming from a rapidly-growing market, and the practical ways to overcome them. The article also presents an example of an Israeli company that is managing to grow faster than its industry, which grows 20% annually.
  
  
• Attributes-Benefits Chart
  How do we create differentiation, distinction, and specific and exclusive benefit for our product to be identified with? An attributes-benefits chart is a great tool that may help you with this.
  
  
• How do you develop an umbrella brand?
  How do we decide what brands to invest in? How many brands can you support? How should you choose an umbrella brand and secondary brands? Guidelines for effective brand management.
  
  
• How do you extend a brand?
  What are the natural boundaries of a brand? How can you extend a brand to new industries? And how can you plan a flexible brand that will suit several markets?
  
  
• Brawn and beauty?
  You can bite off more than you can chew - in marketing as well. This article deals with the advantages of incisive, precise and appropriate positioning, and the disadvantages of multiple marketing messages.
  
  
• Business or marketing strategy?
  On the difference between business strategy and marketing strategy, and the important points when you implement them.
  
  
• Accomplished Justice versus Visible Justice
  What's more important - that a product's benefit is visible and clear, or that it indeed exists? Customers tend to believe what they see and not what we actually did. This article explains why it happens, and why it's critical for marketing professionals.
  
  
• Marketing to "Non-Customers"
  Everyone competes to attaining market segments and growth at the expense of their competitors. But you can often grow using "non-customers" - people that never buy products and services in a specific market. This article explains how to do it.
  
  
• Lecture Summary: Marketing Strategy during a Recession
  How can you adapt your strategy to recession periods and economic crisis? First, make sure that your business is not in distress, and that it is in the proper market. Then, you can compete wisely, or bypass the competition altogether.
  
  
• Marketing Penetration
  Even if you have a win-win product or service, often you'll find the way to your potential clients blocked. This article describes how to land an initial contact with every client, and demonstartes its application with true cases from four different marketing arenas.
  
  
• Marketing Impact
  Even when you have a focused marketing message and a clear target audience, you still need to penetrate the customers' consciousness, out of thousands of other messages that they are exposed to on a daily basis. The article describes how you can reach customers at the right place and at the right time, and effectively transmit your message to them.
  
  
• The Marketing Mix
  Can you collaborate with your competitors? Apparently so, and it's quite worthwhile to do it. The article outlines a number of ways you can grow with the help of your direct competitors, according to the various components of the marketing mix.
  
  
• Connecting the Head to the Feet
  People are the key to forming and implementing a successful business strategy. This article lists critical aspects of strategy development (at senior management level), and describes how it should be transmitted to mid-level management, and implemented successfully in the rest of the organization.
  
  
• Strategy in the Manager's Toolkit
  Developing a strategic plan is perceived as a one-off task that management then needs to find a way to make it happen. However, the management profession cannot settle for realizing a strategy. Management is about developing the strategic perspective at all levels, all the time. This article teaches how to turn strategy into everyday work.

Systematic Innovation^TM

Learn how to develop, time and again, truly innovative products and services, that would surprise the competition and increase profits, using a set of systematic thinking tools.

• Building The Future
  How to build an organization that innovates systematically, and uses it as a key success factor. Insights and recommnedations for on innovation management, including examples from Israel and aboroad.
  
  
• How Do You Make an Organization Innovative?
  This article offers several alternatives to manage and cultivate innovation and creativity among employees.
  
  
• The Ideal Solution
  How can you create extreme innovation? This article suggests ways to develop ideal and revolutionary solutions for customers.
  
  
• Gathering Extreme Ideas?
  How can you take advantage of your employees' ingenuity to achieve extreme innovation?
  
  
• Dealing with Extreme Ideas
  How can you leverage extreme ideas and move the organization toward significant and constant growth? On handling and promoting extreme ideas.
  
  
• Reaping Rapid successes
  Innovation means change, and change arouses resistance. This article describes how you can overcome the resistance, and lead change processes while creating initial successes.
  
  
• Innovations in the Israeli Food Industry
  Examples and origins of surprising products in the Israeli food market, developed through Systematic Innovation processes
  
  
• Can't Stop Moving
  An article in Ma'ariv about Ari Manor, CEO of ZOOZ, which describes how Systematic Innovation™ is conducted.
  
  
• Is Your Company Innovative?
  Can you perdict the future of your market? This short article presents ZOOZ succes stories in innovation, and focuses on several aspects of creating and managing an idea bank.
  
  
• Mouthful of Systematic Innovation
  This article describes six tools of Inventive Thinking, which allow for a systematic development of products. The examples in the article are all from one specific field: the toothbrush. The article should be read as an introduction to Systematic Innovation.
   
• Innovate!
  Can a product be the origin of a different product? This article explains the the process of inventing needs and developing virtual products with surprising benefits, by examining existing products. The article also elaborates on "adding a dimension ", one of the most important thinking tools for systematically developing innovations.
  
  
• Adjustment to the Environment
  How well adjusted is your PC mouse to your desk? This article describes another thinking tool used for developing new product and services. It also discusses the challenges of innovation management in the information age.
   


• The Most Important Motif in Creating Technological Innovation in an Organization
  How to enhance technological innovation: tools and methods for creating added value and leading the market, and the need to optimize and lower costs. Based on a lecture to the People & Computers' CTO & IT Architects forum.
   


• If A Voice Had Color
  Interview with Ari Manor, in Haaretz, describing implementation of innovation processes in organizations, including the SCAMPER tool for creative thinking. How tobecome more creative organization? What drives people from the square?
   
 

• Systematic Innovation in the Textile Industry
  Is it possible to turn textile innovation to a real growth engine? Despite the frenetic that Characterized this field (fad, seasonal collections, short-term trends, etc.) it turns out you can develop innovations in the field of textile material that would last for years.
   
• Intellectual Property as a Strategic Asset
  Patents, trademarks, and industrial design rights are strategic assets to the manufacturer. The article explains how to manage intellectual property (IP) assets, and explains the benefits of IP, including: a higher company evaluation, marketing advantages, organizational improvement and more.
   
• I-TRIZ: The Next Big Thing?
  The Ideation-TRIZ method is a systematic methodology for promoting technological innovation, based on empirical research and findings in areas of engineering sciences and technology. The article describes the origins and the development of the method,  and presents its applications in the modern business world.
   
  

International Retail Sales

Develop successful product lines, learning from the experience of others, and being assisted by various government projects, and by the ProductNet Program, a ZOOZ initiative.

• Locating and Entering an Interesting Retail Chains Market Overseas
  Can an Israeli firm succeed on the shelves of international retail chains? This article presents some principles and processes that greatly improve the chances of success, and details the advantages of the marketing approach as a key to success.
  
  
• From Tefen to Wilkesboro and from Holon to Bentonville
  Have you decided to become an exporter of consumer goods? This article describes a recommended action plan for the novice exporter, and includes valuable tips for those interested in marketing and selling successfully to international retail chains. 
  
  
• ProductNet - Moving the World For You
  An interview with Ari Manor, ZOOZ CEO, on the ProductNet program, which turns local subcontractors into international exporters, while developing an innovative product line and marketing it to international retail chains. The interview includes some tips for small and medium-sized busnisses for periods of recession.
  
  
• Moving Ahead / Zehava Dovrat / Globes Magazine
  A short article presenting for the first time the ProductNet program, which enables small Israeli manufacturers and subcontrator to rapidly grow into international markets.