I cannot decide whether I think that JC Larreche’s book “The Momentum Effect” is ground breaking – or banal. Oddly, I feel the same way about Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne’s “Blue Ocean Strategy.” As an alumnus of INSEAD, I am proud to see the faculty achieve such recognition but I wish that I was convinced that their books represented a major breakthrough in business thinking.
Both books have achieved an impressive degree of traction in the marketplace based on the same basic insight – namely, that business success is based on understanding the sources of customer value, and on crafting your product/service offering in a way that delivers unique value to customers. I think Peter Drucker made this observation over 50 years ago.
Kim and Mauborgne phrase the opportunity in terms of “creating uncontested market space” while Larreche talks in terms of “shifting from compensating strategy to momentum strategy”. I find Larreche’s take on the topic to be more appealing because it is explicit about what companies should stop doing (spending their time pushing products that do not offer compelling customer value) as well as what they should do more of (creating “power offers”).
Net net, I am delighted that the “marketing mindset” is once again being recognized as a powerful source of value creation for business. To my mind, the fundamental challenge of business is how to create a business culture that places equal value on the insights that come from a “marketing mindset” with the operational efficiencies that comes from a “finance mindset”.
