Distinguishers
Winning customers at speed, scale & lower costs
Sandra Vandermerwe & David Erixon
One big wonderful storytelling book and more. It's creative and innovative thinking.
Covid-19 has impacted every industry on the planet. It has pushed brands and businesses into unknown market territories and accelerated trends that were already emerging, but not yet fully formed or mainstream. It has propelled the fourth industrial revolution, with technology central to customer value, how it’s produced and by whom. And it has forced enterprises to reimagine who they are and what they might become.
This book lays out a new business recipe for how to get, win and stay ahead in a post-pandemic world. It’s different because it goes beyond digital disruption and business transformation with the authors introducing the notion of Distinguishers – people, brands and businesses that win customers at speed, scale and lower costs while creating value for an expanding customer stakeholder universe.
The formula they offer is practical and potent. They reveal the next ‘new’, happening now.
Distinguishers displace mature and stale brands and enterprises – who the authors call Extinguishers – who cling onto old beliefs and persist in doing it the old way.
Distinguishers are obsessed with changing customer behaviour and creating market movements at speed. They break from old wisdom and methods of accounting, because they know that customers won’t pay for baggage that adds no value. Distinguishers open up space and create more wealth, while using less.
This book, examining over 100 cases from all over the globe (Amazon, Netflix, Nespresso, Sodastream, Shopify, Kikstarter, UberEats and many more), reveals the recipe to become a Distinguisher.
978-1-881202-72-7 | Trade Paperback | Business | 368 pages | R320
Sandra Vandermerwe is currently an extraordinary Professor at GIBS (SA) and was previously Professor at IMD Switzerland and Imperial College Business School London, having worked on executive programs at business schools throughout the world. Sandra is a thought leader whose concepts and methodologies are used by corporations worldwide. A prolific best-selling author and speaker, with several awards for her case studies, her work is based on decades of applied research and consulting. Sandra lives in Cape Town.
David Erixon founded the world-renowned digital learning and research institute Hyper Island – dubbed ‘the Oxbridge of Digital’ – and digital experience firm Doberman (now part of EY). He has spent a decade in senior leadership positions at Vodafone, including five years as global brand director. David has worked on numerous industry projects, corporate accelerators, research initiatives and executive training focusing on customer-centric digital innovation and business transformation. David is an associate of Trinity Business School Dublin and marketing director at NatWest Group. He lives in Dublin.