Meeting of the Minds: Creating the Market-Based Enterprise by Vincent P. Barabba

Synopsis

Meeting of the Minds shows managers how they can create dynamic, market-based decision-making mechanisms that lead to competitive advantage. It offers a new strategic approach to marketing based on the simple principle that market leadership is attained by transforming information into shared knowledge. This book is a must-read for anyone with a stake in his or her organization's ambitions for market leadership: marketers, CIOs, strategic planners, R&D and product development managers, knowledge managers, CFOs, as well as managers in the public sector. Drawing on his thirty years of executive experience at Eastman Kodak, Xerox, General Motors, and in government, Barabba demonstrates that when companies use systems thinking to view customers and the market as an extension of the organization, they achieve a meeting of the minds - creating value for customer, community and enterprise. Barabba rejects the path of organizational restructuring and instead presents a framework for creating unity of knowledge and purpose across functions and for linking them with the markets they serve. He offers an array of tools and concepts - like the dialogue decision process and the knowledge-use network - designed to promote systemic knowledge gathering and decision making without dissipating functional competencies.

Annotation

Vincent Barabba provides a practical blueprint for creating dynamic, market-based decision-making mechanisms that lead to competitive advantage. Drawing on his 30 years of experience, Barabba demonstrates that when companies use systems thinking to view customers and the market as an extension of the firm, they achieve a meeting of the minds--creating value for customer, community, and enterprise.

BookList

Much management literature today focuses on organizational structure, arguing that problems can be solved and corporate performance improved if only companies will restructure. Barabba suggests, however, that information about and from the customer and how it is gathered, disseminated, and used are the key. He reiterates here what he and Gerald Zaltman made the case for in "Hearing the Voice of the Market" (1991) and what Barabba has discovered in creating a market-based decision network for General Motors as general manager of its Strategic Decision Center. He proposes that managers must "move from (looking at] marketing as a function to [having it] as a state of mind," and he lays out a strategy--and the tools--for doing so.