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-{{ovation.company}}The Five Lessons that Separate the “Giant Killers” from Everybody Else
Patterns emerge from the interviews and stories Stephen Denny has written about in Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry. The leaders of these brands that have successfully out-maneuvered the giants they face see things differently than the rest of their peers. They have learned how to view the battlefield from vantage points that others have missed, which allows them to see things that most everyone else fails to notice.
Some of these learnings cut against the grain of "common knowledge." Others seem obvious, but their nuances reveal a startling shift into new territory. All of them can be applied to your business.
The compiled teachings of over fifty of the world's top business thinkers can inspire and galvanize any business leader. These business leaders and their combined wisdom come from a diverse set of industries, from technology to consumer packaged goods to professional services, and from every continent on the globe.
What audience members will take away:
The Four Hidden Lessons of the Giant Killers
The Four Hidden Lessons from the Giant Killers discusses the non-obvious, counter-intuitive and radically different perspectives that are gained by careful study of those global business leaders who have done the seemingly impossible task of out-maneuvering the giants in their respective industries.
What audience members will take away:
Speed as a Competitive Weapon
You launch a product. The giant you compete against forms a task force to study what to do about your product. You launch your second version. They form a “Tiger Team” to develop the right action plan to deal with what is now the old version of your product. You launch your third release. And they circulate the Product Requirements Document for their product that would have been a worthy competitor to your first product, while you launch your fourth release.
"Giant Killers" understand that they can work faster than their competitors can. But what many students of business don't understand is that companies with speed cultures make better decisions than their slower counterparts because their internal decision making cultures are designed to eliminate bureaucracy and hubris. Better decisions happen because everything unnecessary is stripped away.
What audience members will take away:
"This Sentence Has Five Words": Eigen Cultures, Creating Truisms & The Future of Marketing
"Giant Killers" out-maneuver their much larger competitors in the marketplace of ideas by being hard to miss—every customer touch point is more than just consistent: it’s self-defining. We know who it is without ever seeing the brand. And each touch-point builds upon the last, creating a mosaic of consumer experiences from websites and ads to customer service interactions and hiring processes.
We’re all being asked to do more with less, so we need to foster a self-defining environment where every bullet counts. There’s no room in our P&L’s for waste anymore. And companies with greater brand strength have higher valuations.
The idea of self-defining truisms is derived from the concept of Eigen Values, a phrase that comes from the discipline of cybernetics. Eigen Values have influenced fields as far flung as philosophy, psychology, architecture and art—and in Killing Giants: 10 Strategies for Toppling the Goliath in Your Industry, Denny describes how this idea has found a natural home in the worlds of marketing and management, influencing how “Giant Killer” brands use product development, human resources, pricing and other disciplines as means to connect their brand DNA to the needs of their consumers.
What audience members will take away:
Winning in the Last Three Feet
"Giant Killers" out-maneuver their much larger competitors at retail not by out-spending them—they win by letting the giant spend the money to drive customers into the stores so they can convert them there. Customers are never more qualified than when they’re off the couch, wallet and circular in hand, ready to buy—and few are so confident in their decision making that a sincere pitch at that last moment, in the last three feet, won’t make them consider a new brand.
Drawing upon both case studies and the latest in the social psychology of interpersonal influence, audience members will learn not only how smart "Giant Killer" brands have created "jump balls" where their giant competitors have assumed they had a "slam dunk," they will also learn the decision triggers that make these tactics so effective.
What audience members will take away:
Stephen Denny is a competitive strategy + marketing consultant, helping emerging brands define their competitive positioning, communication strategies and implementation plans in the market. He is the author of Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath In Your Industry (Portfolio US & Penguin UK).
Apart from writing and consulting, Denny is a frequent speaker on competitive strategy and marketing. He holds multiple patents, has lived and worked in both the US and Japan, and has an MBA from the Wharton School.
Prior to consulting, he was a 20+ year senior marketing executive having managed the people, strategy and budgets at brand name technology companies like at Sony, Onstar, Iomega and Plantronics. He lives just south of Santa Cruz, CA.