Customers drive change

Akio Toyoda spoke in Michigan yesterday. We’ve been part of this process for 10 years now and can testify to how it works making products, services and companies better and more valuable.

From Automotive News:
In his keynote speech at the Management Briefing Seminars, Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda challenged the auto industry to reinvent the automobile and told the gathered executives that they are not in charge of deciding how to to do it.

“All of us in this room might think we are driving change in our companies and in our industry,” Toyoda said. “But we are not.

“It is the customer who is driving change. And if we want to make something happen, we’d better listen and learn the customer’s habits.”

Doing so could allow the industry to discover “a need so big that it calls for a true breakthrough idea,” Toyoda said. “Something bigger than just worrying about how many cupholders our competitor has in their new model.”

‘Contribute to society’

Toyoda said his vision for Toyota follows that of his grandfather, Kiichiro Toyoda, who founded the company in 1937. His grandfather insisted that the automaker should “contribute to society through manufacturing cars,” Akio Toyoda said. That calls upon Toyota staffers “to aspire to a higher cause than just building cars and making money,” he said.

Toyoda admitted, though, that “the severe drop in the economy and auto market has created some of the most challenging times Toyota has ever faced.” Toyota posted its third-straight quarterly loss in the three months that ended June 30 and is on track for its second-straight fiscal year of operating losses.

Toyoda also noted that General Motors Co.’s decision to withdraw from the two automakers’ joint venture in Fremont, Calif., New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., “has created some extremely difficult issues for us to resolve.”

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Filed under: Automotive , Automotive, Clients, Consumers, Future, Innovation, Partnerships

Jeff Bezos video to Zappos employees – worth watching

Filed under: Information , Consumers, Marketing, Online, Partnerships, Technology, VC, Video

Sorgenfrei announces new partnership

We routinely help clients understand diversity and build better businesses through more complete approaches to subsegments of the population.

Today we made official a new partnership with Targeted Diversity Marketing. TDM is the parent company of Gaywheels.com – the premier automotive site for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community. We will work with TDM supporting their clients with market research services and lean on TDM when working for our clients addressing the GLBT community.

Joe LaMuraglia founded TDM and built Gaywheels.com. He is as passionate a carnut as they come. So of course we want to work more with him if we could.  Below is the release that was issued today.

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November 11, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boutique Market Research Firm Expands Its Reach

Sorgenfrei Signs Deal with Targeted Diversity Marketing

New York, NY – Sorgenfrei, a consulting and market research firm based in New York City has signed a partnership deal with the niche marketing firm Targeted Diversity Marketing (TDM), the parent company for Gaywheels.com – the country’s first automotive site targeted to the GLBT consumer. Based in northern New Jersey, TDM has long advocated the importance of better understanding Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) consumers and the new partnership will strengthen Sorgenfrei’s expertise in this area.

“The ability to understand and communicate with diversity markets will be a defining attribute for successful research companies in the future,” says Sorgenfrei’s founder Peter Sorgenfrei. By joining forces with an experienced firm like TDM, we have the potential to offer our clients a more comprehensive approach to their market research challenges.”

“Joining forces with Sorgenfrei is a logical extension of our brand,” says Joe LaMuraglia, founder of TDM. “Our insights on the GLBT automotive consumer have just begun to scratch the surface of this desirable demographic group. Adding the ability to offer custom research insights to assist clients in their GLBT outreach will certainly set us both apart.”

Sorgenfrei and TDM will collaborate on projects and combine intellectual capital to offer a comprehensive resource for clients with both general market and GBLT-specific automotive research needs.

About Sorgenfrei

Sorgenfrei was founded on the belief that consumer and competitive research could be more client-friendly, more accurate, more dependable, more inspired, and more affordable. Based in New York City, the firm works with clients across North America. Sorgenfrei is a truly global firm, with strong roots in Europe, and ten languages spoken by the firm’s team members. Learn more at www.sorgenfreillc.com

About Targeted Diversity Marketing

Targeted Diversity Marketing (TDM) is the parent company for Gaywheels.com. Launched in 2005, TDM, established the first GLBT-targeted automotive information site. TDM was founded by Joe LaMuraglia, an automotive industry expert with a comprehensive background in market research, product development and new media.

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Filed under: Automotive, Market Research, Marketing , Automotive, GLBT, Partnerships, Research

Goliath Enlists David (But Doesn’t Eat Him)

The Relationship between Fortune 500 Companies and Small Consultants Evolves

Can big companies and small consultants work together in ways that are positive for both parties… and ultimately the consumer?

Small, fast-on-their-feet consulting firms bring a host of benefits to the table beyond simply monetary ones.

These small firms are born out of a perceived market need. They are close to their customers, and respond to clients needs with an efficiency and speed that larger firms simply can’t do. Small entrepreneurial organizations are not beholden to the “usual” way of doing things, and make their own rules, spurring innovation. This makes them enticing targets for acquisition by their larger clients.

But, like a greasy cheeseburger that tasted wonderful going down, sometimes these acquisitions cause heartburn and regret later.

Beginning in the 1970’s, large firms began to look to small, entrepreneurial consultants for unique advice, design capabilities, products, and/or talents. More often than not, what started out as a partnership of non-equals ended with the absorption of the smaller company by the Fortune 500.

An example: From its birth in the late 80s, a small, entrepreneurial software company was doing groundbreaking work as a third-party vendor to several Fortune 500s. One of the companies became concerned that the small company’s work was available to the highest bidder and purchased the little company and its talent pool, thereby ensuring that only they had the cool new ideas and technologies.

But, the executives at the Fortune 500 soon became uncomfortable with the processes by which this new group worked — processes radically different from their own. They had no experience with software life-cycles, yet they increased their oversight year after year, saddling the software team with rules, procedures, and managers whose task it was to bring the “rogue” group into confluence with the core business of the mother company. As a result, the company-within-a-company was, at length, unable to do anything groundbreaking. Viewed as a failure, it was “downsized”, its staff laid off, and its work outsourced to — you may have guessed — a third party vendor.

This scenario has been repeated again and again by any number of large corporations and small independents. Lamentably, these mergers most often failed, sucking the vitality out of the resources absorbed from the smaller firm, and resulting in their loss. Often the larger company suffered damage as well, in the form of unmet customer requirements, missed opportunities, and squandered investment.

Why does this happen? Largely it’s a function of the differences between the ways small, entrepreneurial firms and large corporate entities are run.

Large entities often become victims of their own hierarchy — the top execs no longer dabble in the creative process of research and design, nor do they court new ideas from within their own company. Ideas generated at lower levels of the hierarchy rarely work their way up through successive levels of management and “group-think” that occurs when underlings are afraid of offending those higher up with “radical” ideas.

A small firm, on the other hand, has a flatter management structure, and the company’s executives are involved with gathering customer requirements, designing means of meeting them, implementing them, and engaging in a continuing dialogue with the customer as they are rolled out.

In the newly emerging model, David and Goliath work together as separate partners. This allows David to maintain his autonomy and quickness, while Goliath doesn’t have to pay for the overhead inherent in design and development — staff salaries, software and hardware, and the like.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Consulting, Partnerships