Unlocking the Customer Value Chain

How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption

By: Thales S. Teixeira, Greg Piechota

Narrated by: Tom Weitzel

Based on six years of research, Harvard Business School Professor Thales Teixeira shows how and why industries are disrupted and what established companies can do to respond - as well as what potential start-ups must master if they hope to gain a competitive edge.

As it turns out, there is a pattern to disruption in an industry, whether the disruptor is Uber, Airbnb, or a dozen other start-ups that have shaken up incumbents and threatened the status quo.

For disruptors to pose a threat to an industry, they have to successfully break the link in choosing, purchasing, or consuming a product or service. Upstarts, Teixeira shows, do not attempt to compete with or overtake a reigning incumbent company entirely. Instead, they work to peel away a portion of the consumer decision-making process, the way Birchbox offered women a new way to sample new beauty products from a variety of cosmetics and fragrance companies, without having to go to the Revlon or Estee Lauder store. Zipcar doesn't attempt to compete head-to-head with GM but rather to offer people who need transportation an alternative way to get around, without owning a car themselves, or being responsible for fuel, maintenance, or insurance.

In a penetrating narrative filled with case studies and stories, Teixeira shows us how start-ups successfully disrupt industries - and what industry leaders must do to avoid being disrupted and protect their domain.

Includes a bonus PDF of figures and tables

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Thales S. Teixeira (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Thales Teixeira brings a brilliant and incisive intellect - blending fundamental insights with practical guidance - to the urgent question of digital transformation. In Unlocking the Customer Value Chain, he gives us a road map for winning the right customers, and for keeping them, amidst the vast wreckage of destroyed business models. Fresh, smart, and strategic - a worthy read!” (Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, co-author of Built to Last)

"Digital Disruption has been greatly misunderstood. In Unlocking the Customer Value Chain, Thales Teixeira demystifies some of the misconceptions and, more importantly, creates a generalized framework for executives in virtually any industry to understand and respond to disruptors using a customer-centric approach." (John Quelch, Dean of the Miami Business School and Leonard M. Miller University Professor and Vice Provost, University of Miami)

"No company can succeed today without being customer-centric - agile enough to recognize the weak signals that customers’ expectations are evolving, often in a non-linear fashion and adapt to them. Thales Teixeira provides a fresh perspective and framework for making tough choices about how to compete in today’s competitive environment of digital disruptive." (Professor Linda A. Hill, Harvard Business School, coauthor of Collective Genius)

Great read!

Really interesting way to look at disruptive companies. Gives interesting and current examples from cool companies’ case studies, and bases everything upon research. Recommended for strategy and marketing professionals!

Decoupling is a very useful 'lens'

The act of breaking things down to their simplest components (decoupling) is not new. Applying this concept to the customer value chain (CVC), however, is refreshingly insightful. This book provides a useful and lasting lens I would highly recommend applying to internal and external business analysis.

Insightful

A great insight in understanding the touch points and the vulnerability of all businesses. The need to have a great customer knowledge, behavior and trend in planning and positioning your business to ride the next wave in a profitable way.

Like "The Lean Startup"? You'll love this book!

As a tech entrepreneur schooled by Eric Reis' "The Lean Startup", I tend to think of technology as being the driving force behind the success of my business. This book taught me otherwise!

Through carefully examining the customer value chain in my vertical I was able to truly discern between business model drivers, e.g. which activities I make better for the customer, how I do it, when I intersect the customer's decision making process, how much I charge, from business model enablers (data, algorithms, platforms). With this newly acquired clarity, I am better equipped to problem solve on behalf of the consumer.

What is more, having to always go back to the Customer Value Chain and check my assumptions is not just illuminating, it is also truly transformative as it forces a much higher dose of empathy for my customer than I had ever had before. The author himself exhibits tremendous empathy by providing in depth examples of successes AND failures in serving customers.

If you have an entrepreneurial dream of providing something new or better to the world, read this book! It will help you think about your dream the right way, and you'll be off to the races!

One of the most OUTSTANDING business books I have ever read!

This is more valuable than an MBA, you have two read it as many times as you can. Every time you will discover another valuable lesson.

This Book Is So Good That I Tell No One About It

This book will give you the measures of success needed in starting a business in today's market, maintaining said business, how to work with competitors, and how to identify the next big thing in your industry. A+++ Read. I seriously tell only special people about this book that I know will value its knowledge and insight, but talk about the points discussed all the time.

Best book on disruptive so far

If you are interested in disruptive market, but not in terms of technology, this is the one.
Although, written more from a big business standpoint, startup can relate, too.