- MARKETING MYOPIA - Myopia _ H. Mintzberg
"MARKETING MYOPIA" MYOPIA
(adapted from Mintzberg, 1994:279-281)
In 1960, Theodore Levitt, a marketing professor at the Harvard Business School, published a celebrated article entitled "Marketing Myopia." It is difficult to find a manager or planner who does not know the theme, even if he or she has never read the article.The basic point was that firms should define themselves in terms of broad industry orientation—"underlying generic need" in the words of Kotler and Singh (1981:39)—rather than narrow product or technology terms. To take Levitt's favorite examples, railroad companies were to see themselves in the transportation business, oil refiners in the energy business. Companies had a field day with the idea, rushing to redefine themselves in all kinds of fancy ways—for example, the articulated mission of one ball bearing company became "reducing friction." It was even better for the business schools. What better way to stimulate the students than to get them dreaming about how the chicken factory could be in the business of providing human energy or garbage collection could become beautification?
Unfortunately, it was all too easy, a cerebral exercise that, while opening vistas, could also detach people from the mundane world of plucking and compacting. Often the problem came down to some awfully ambitious assumptions about the strategic capabilities of an organization—namely that these are almost limitless, or at least very adaptable. Thus we have the example from George Steiner, presented in apparent seriousness, that "buggy whip manufacturers might still be around if they had said their business was not making buggy whips but self-starters for carriages" (1979:156). But what in the world would have made them capable of doing that? These products shared nothing in common—no material supply, no technology, no production process, no distribution channel—save a thought in somebody's head about making vehicles move. Why should starters have been any more
(adapted from Mintzberg, 1994:279-281)
In 1960, Theodore Levitt, a marketing professor at the Harvard Business School, published a celebrated article entitled "Marketing Myopia." It is difficult to find a manager or planner who does not know the theme, even if he or she has never read the article.The basic point was that firms should define themselves in terms of broad industry orientation—"underlying generic need" in the words of Kotler and Singh (1981:39)—rather than narrow product or technology terms. To take Levitt's favorite examples, railroad companies were to see themselves in the transportation business, oil refiners in the energy business. Companies had a field day with the idea, rushing to redefine themselves in all kinds of fancy ways—for example, the articulated mission of one ball bearing company became "reducing friction." It was even better for the business schools. What better way to stimulate the students than to get them dreaming about how the chicken factory could be in the business of providing human energy or garbage collection could become beautification?
Unfortunately, it was all too easy, a cerebral exercise that, while opening vistas, could also detach people from the mundane world of plucking and compacting. Often the problem came down to some awfully ambitious assumptions about the strategic capabilities of an organization—namely that these are almost limitless, or at least very adaptable. Thus we have the example from George Steiner, presented in apparent seriousness, that "buggy whip manufacturers might still be around if they had said their business was not making buggy whips but self-starters for carriages" (1979:156). But what in the world would have made them capable of doing that? These products shared nothing in common—no material supply, no technology, no production process, no distribution channel—save a thought in somebody's head about making vehicles move. Why should starters have been any more