Identifying disruptive customers to nurture for long-term growth

A subset of customers in a service-company's portfolio, seem unattractive to serve. Such customers neither align with the core of the company's business nor do they represent a straight-forward investment opportunity that the company aims to harvest in the short-to-medium term. However, serving such customers could lead to a significant change in the business model of the firm in the medium-to-long term and help the firm build competencies to remain relevant in the evolving business environment. The thesis proposes a framework that firms can use to identify such disruptive customers and to manage project execution with such customers. Depth interviews are used to validate the framework. Interviews are conducted with executives from firms that focus on business-to-business customers in the service industries, specifically consulting, technology and telecom.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Sharma, Pranab

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sharmila C. Chatterjee.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72851

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/72851