The 3 Businesses

Businesses have 3 problems.

Reduce the friction in any of these three problems, and you find you'll spot within an organization.

From HBR (Unbundling the Corporation):

When you look beneath the surface of most companies, you find three kinds of businesses —a customer relationship business, a product innovation business, and an infrastructure business. Although organizationally intertwined, these businesses are actually very different. They each play a unique role; they each employ different types of people; and they each have different economic, competitive, and even cultural imperatives.


1. People (Internal Team/External Customers) - Attract and build a relationship with customers.

2. Technology (Product) - Come up with new technologies and products for customers.

3. Scale (Infrastructure) - Making the Logistics and Delivery of product that’s efficient.

In the great unbundling that’s happening with the Internet, we’re seeing more companies focus on dominating one of these key areas (focusing on all three tends to lead to conflicting energies).

Personally, I’m in the Customer Relationship Business.

How about you?

xx David