Lacking Pipeline – No Good Successor To The RAZR
This slide seems to indicate a problem with Motorola’s innovation processes and pipeline. There were no new “good” products to replace the RAZR. To follow up the RAZR’s success, Motorola would have been wise to dimensionize the utility for RAZR customers, and figure out the key features and benefits which were highly valued by them. This knowledge, and more importantly, its application to the following new designs, would have clearly led them to breakthroughs to match or at least approach the RAZR’s success.

The Four Factors Needed To Dimensionize Utility
In dimensionizing utility, Motorola should not do so for a generic singular customer profile – but they should divide the market into key buyer groups. This should be based on any combination of demographics, geography, lifestyle, and usage. Put these four factors into separate two-by-two grids and have each factor occupy a quadrangle of the grid. Next, list the key characteristics of important buyer groups according to each of these factors. Pay particular attention to usage in terms of two aspects: type and occasion. To develop a set of composites, link the key demographic, geographical, and lifestyle factors to a particular usage type or occasion. This is a key step in developing a feel for what is valued by composites of different types of major buyer groups. The next step is absolutely vital: connect the usage types and occasions to product features to develop.

Translating What Buyers Value Using “Utility-Usage” Chain
By making this “utility-usage” value chain, an executive can directly translate what key buy or potential buyer groups highly value, into features which mirror their expectations and desires. This will allow Motorola compete strongly in various profiled marketspaces. If done right, it will allow them to own marketspace – just like they did with the success of the RAZR. They can replicate this success using this strategy. It should be at the heart of their innovation strategy going forward – and it’s certainly not too late to save their business.

Introduction: Location and Marketspaces
Two well- worn clichés in politics and real estate now readily apply to business strategy and marketing: “location, location, location,” and “all politics is local.”  Add a line from Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street, “information is the most valuable resource I know,” to our previously mentioned quotes about location, and a business person can weave a powerful recipe to dominate markets.  Even more importantly, any business or organization can provide products and services which delight customers, and get them to evangelize about their experience.  This tidal wave of excitement influences people to buy your products and services even more than the best and most effective marketing campaign.  And as Malcolm Gladwell points out in his seminal book, “The Tipping Point,” this enthusiasm propels an avalanche of positive influence in which consumers actively seek your products and services.  This energy is accessed and released through the proper use of information which focuses on what is happening in a given area.  For the sake of this article, our major focus will be on geographic locations, but we will also examine different types of areas based on other factors – let’s call them marketspaces.

Why A Marketspace Is Important
First, a marketspace is an area designated by a common parameter or set of parameters.  All the people in a marketspace have something in common.  That commonality is dictated by one or more of several factors.  These major categories include geography or locale, which will be examined more extensively shortly, and demographics, socio-economics, type of usage of a product, and ethnicity.  It is very powerful to combine multiple factors to create focus and marketspaces which are unique, and where your business has a competitive advantage to dominate this space.  It’s about creating spaces which best suit and exploit your product or services’ features and benefits.  An executive needs to create “match-ups” against competitors in marketspaces which cater to his products or services’ strengths.  In this sense, Michael Porter’s idea of “competitive advantage” in his widely read business book, “Competitive Strategy,” is relevant.  However, I advocate the idea of occupying areas in markets and creating new marketspace through understanding the information about that space in terms of current and latent customer utility.  Latent customer utility is critical, and can be tapped through new features and benefits of a business’s products or services – this is where “Blue Oceans” are created.

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Mike Bolden marketing expert and blue ocean strategist – writing to inform, enlighten, and inspire.  Author of forth coming book, “Owning Marketspace”.  Available for consulting and speaking engagements.