Thought Leaders
Why Establishing High Expectations Is a Quality of Good Leadership
Regardless of your leadership style, it's important to raise the bar and help your team rise to meet it.
Richard Koch is an entrepreneur who has made over $300 million from starting businesses and investing in early stage venture capital. His businesses have included Filofax, Plymouth Gin, Belgo Restaurants, Betfair, FanDuel, and Auto1. Formerly he was a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and a partner of Bain & Company before cofounding LEK consulting. He is author of many books on business and ideas, including The 80/20 Principle, which has sold over a million copies and been translated into 35 languages, and his newest title Simplify: How the Best Businesses in the World Succeed. Richard wrote the foreword to the Entrepreneur Press bestseller, 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall.
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More From Richard Koch
Thought Leaders
How Steve Jobs Turned Setbacks Into Success
His story serves as a reminder that disasters also make the eventual triumph sweeter.
Thought Leaders
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Thought Leaders
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Belief in your destiny will fizzle and fade without a clear idea of the stage on which your success will be played out.
Thought Leaders
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To be happy at work, a greater understanding of one's own nature cannot help but get you into the right workplace.
Building a Business
How Southwest Airlines Created a Mass Market for Air Travel
Herb Kelleher created the first budget airline, which found great success by simplifying everything from the destinations to the (lack of) snacks served on board.
Building a Business
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You don't have to choose to price-simplify or proposition-simplify to find business success. Find out more about three business models that can help you grow.
Building a Business
How Airbnb Changed the Traditional Lodging Industry
By taking advantage of existing properties and involving homeowner in the transaction, Airbnb disrupted the lodging industry and is now valued at $20 billion.
Building a Business
Can You Be Both a Price- and a Proposition-Simplifier?
You may be able to start out that way, but at some point, you'll have to choose one strategy so you can throw all your efforts behind it.
Building a Business
The Secret to Spotify’s Success
Its popular service, which grew virally, is free to the majority of users but still turns a profit.
Building a Business
5 Bad Reasons Managers Don’t Simplify
Learn the five reasons business leaders tend to make their businesses more complex rather than more simple.
Building a Business
How Uber Used a Simplified Business Model to Disrupt the Taxi Industry
By offering all three benefits of a price- and proposition-simplifier, Uber's founders were able to create a service no one knew they needed.
Building a Business
Is Your Business Vulnerable to an Attack From a Simplifier? Here’s How to Find Out.
If your company is a market leader, an upstart could be ready to attack your market and grab your market share. Discover the warning signs of imminent attack.
Building a Business
How This Successful Company Simplified the Business Consulting Industry
By reinventing business theory and simplifying the model of business consulting, this consulting powerhouse has remained a top player for decades.
Building a Business
6 Ways to Redesign Your Business System to Transform Your Industry
Find out how to change your business system to ensure that it's scaled up to become dominant and irreplaceable.
Building a Business
The Strategy That Made Apple Computers a Leader in Mobile Computing
For Steve Jobs, having the cheapest computer on the market wasn't the goal. Instead, he wanted to produce a machine that would be better for users.
Building a Business
3 Ways to Redesign Your Product and Spark a Price Revolution
Find out if you should make your product less expensive.
Building a Business
How 3 Clever Restaurateurs Turned McDonald’s Into a Price-Simplifying Worldwide Phenomenon
Launched by Mac and Dick McDonald in 1948, then purchased by Ray Kroc in 1961, McDonald's is the quintessential example of a business that used a price simplifying model.
Building a Business
5 Key Ways to Make Your Product More Useful or More Appealing to Customers
In order to proposition simplify your product, try these tips for making it either more useful or more appealing to buyers.
Building a Business
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A brainstorm turned Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, from a mail-order business owner into an entrepreneur who turned the furniture industry upside down.
Building a Business
5 Ways to Increase Your Sales and Make Your Products Easier to Use
The first step in proposition-simplifying is to make the product you sell easier for your customers to use. Here are five ways to make that happen.
Building a Business
How Ford Created a Huge Market by Lowering its Prices
By creating cars cheap enough for almost anyone to buy, Henry Ford built a billion-dollar company.
Building a Business
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These two strategies for growing a successful business are very different. Find out which would be a good match for you.
Building a Business
The Better Skills Test: How to Determine If You Should Price or Proposition Simplify Your Business
In order to succeed as a simplifier, your firm needs to have the right skill set for your market, but it must also be better at simplifying in that way than any current or potential competitor.
Building a Business
The Keys Test: How to Determine If You Should Simplify Your New Business
If you can see a key in your business, does it belong to price- or proposition-simplifying? That will give you at least a clue as to the better strategy for you.
Building a Business
The Gap Test: How to Determine If You Should Simplify Your Business
Go for the gap -- and do the opposite from the market leader before anyone else does.
Building a Business
The Attitude Test: How to Determine If You Should Simplify Your Business
When you don't know if you should simplify your price strategy or your business proposition, this test can help you decide which method is best for you.
