Smart Customers, Stupid Companies: Why Only Intelligent Companies Will Thrive, and How To Be One of Them

by Michael Hinshaw, Bruce Kasanoff

"This is a real page-turner! Hinshaw and Kasanoff provide a quick and thrilling tour of the immediate future of business. So read it and heed it, folks, because it just doesn’t come any more direct or compelling than this!"
-- Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., authors of EXTREME Honesty as a Competitive Advantage Last decade, companies strove to be great. Now they need to act as smart as the customers they wish to serve. Why? Because acting dumber than your customers is not a sustainable business model. This visually arresting book not only challenges business leaders to profit from the wave of disruptive innovation making customers smarter, but it also presents an actionable five-step plan for doing just that. Hinshaw and Kasanoff explain that disruptive innovation is "already providing individuals with tools more advanced, in many cases, than the most sophisticated commercial enterprises had just five years ago," and argue that "established firms will need to reinvent themselves and disrupt their own industries to stay alive." "So energizing it actually made my skin tingle and my pulse race. Lot of books prod you to think about the future; this book is like a punch in the face. I'm fortunate I had the opportunity to read this before my competitors."
-- Chris Zane, Founder & President, Zane's Cycles, and author of REINVENTING THE The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers

Genres: Business

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 2012

Reviews

[Bruce Kasanoff]

I am the co-author of this book.

[DaniSanti · Rating 3 out of 5]

It gets better with the pages, but it does not get older well.
It presents the idea customer are getting smarter, mostly, by the access to information thru smartphones/internet.
While companies are not doing so by providing best data and info to their employees.
It is based on many ideas from around 2010, and, for me, that is the main reason now the book is not as valuable as it was on that time.
Difficult to recommend it to someone, it does not present fundamental concepts and it is a bit outdated.

[Teri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smart Customers, Stupid Companies by Michael Hinshaw and Bruce Kasanoff is a short book about our ever evolving technologically smart society and how companies need to be more forward thinking in the area of technology or they will miss out on business or even not make it at all. The authors' theory is that companies must be customer centric and not financial centric (build it and they will come, along with the money) and be on the cutting edge of technology to gain customers and their loyalty. In the last ten years we have moved from a society that could go out to buy a product at a specific store, say Best Buy, and take the product home without a lot of price comparison to a society that walks into Best Buy, sees in person what we want then with our smart phones, purchase that item in the store from the cheapest seller they can find, say Amazon. If companies are not prepared for the new way of shopping for products and services, they will not be able to compete with the companies that are available to work with these new smart customers.

I didn't think the book was totally eye opening, maybe because I am one of those "smart customers" but it did remind me as a person that works for a large technology company that we need to continue to be on the cutting edge and make the customer experience better and easier.

[Isaac · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hype. Written by seemingly typical marketers who do not understand business or technology (though their profile seems stellar!). And they write in a black-and-white manner, when many things are gray and in-between. Many things they says "stupid" companies do not do are very expensive to do! Plus they stretch tech and consumer behavior too far -- so their predictions in May 2012 are a far cry from what is today.

It was not until page 120 that the authors started to talk about their "SMART" solution framework to the problems they attempted to assert in the preceding pages. But their suggestions are superficial reminders and platitudes than anything game-changing or revolutionary. I can't say I have learned much or gotten something I could immediately apply into my business. I have gotten much more from business school and the day-to-day of operating my own. Perhaps I'm just not the right audience for their book.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A must read for today's business world. This book shows how businesses must stay in touch with their customers and the speed of technology. The book also outlines how to thrive in this ever-changing world instead of just sharing the why an organization may be out of touch. A quick read full of examples!!! Thanks to Goodreads for my win of this book.

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good wake call for companies that aren't keeping up with their digitally-savvy customers, presented in a very creative format.

[Dan MacInnis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally relevant and important if you want to be a company that has a bright future. The examples and philosophy aligns with my own customer centric beliefs. Well done guys. Top read.