On the Futility of Innovating on Your Own: From Goods-Dominant Logic to Service(-Dominant) Logic in the Financial Services Industry
It is a kind of cliché to state that the financial services industry landscape is changing rapidly, continuously and often unexpectedly. Customers don’t seem to care about those incumbent financial services firms that are not responsive to their needs. Although there has been a constant stream of assurances from various banks, wealth managers, and insurance companies that they are customer-oriented and responsive to customer needs, a lot of things remain to be done. Customer-orientation hot talk, as I call it, is a form of self-deception, and although most of the financial services companies still heavily rely on old-dated goods-dominant logic, they talk as if the reality is something entirely different. The truth is that most financial services companies are again faking true customer-orientation and this is a real problem. This is very problematic as it deceives both the client as well as shareholders (or stakeholders). Signaling, shouting out loud random words, is simple but…
The world is changing, no doubt about it
All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. – Robin Sharma The world of business has been changing so fast and unpredictable lately that sometimes it is hard to remember when this all started. Things have always started but nowadays no day passes without reading about some exciting new developments and novel approaches. One of the main changes that we have witnessed over the years, for example, stems from the way that clients and customers expect to be treated throughout their journey. This trend has increased with the emergence of social media; just reflect on the recent United Airlines scandal where an unwilling passenger was forcefully dragged off the plane in an overbooking situation. This unfortunate incident went viral thanks to the social media, and it caused significantly reputational damage to the United Airlines. [1] Although the incident was settled in late April, it still leaves a bad…