Business today remains tethered to a paradigm that is long out of date. This mindset assumes that universal answers exist: Businesses can simply apply compartmentalized operations and follow linear paths to success. Experienced managers know business doesn’t work this way. Where should they turn?
In this groundbreaking book, Doug Garnett shows how complexity science reveals a new understanding of how business works that is as useful on the front lines as in the C-suite. This discipline—the study of behaviors in highly interconnected, adapting systems dominated by emergence—is revolutionizing fields from biology and economics to psychology and artificial intelligence. Recognizing a business as a complex adaptive system operating within other complex systems changes our perspective on everything from core concepts of demand, profit, and strategy to the nature of business success. Managers who grasp the order hidden within complexity discover not only a powerful new understanding of their role but also potential for dramatic contributions to success.
The Complexity Paradigm features vivid examples ranging from local coffee shops to major corporations like PepsiCo, Boeing, Mattel, Starbucks, and General Motors as well as tech giants such as Apple and AT&T. Grounding eye-opening theory in the realities of business, this foundational look at complexity offers deep insight and value for practitioners and students alike.
Doug Garnett is the founder and president of the consulting firm Protonik LLC, which specializes in market research and consumer behavior, and an adjunct professor in the School of Business at Portland State University. His clients have included Lowe’s, Procter & Gamble, AT&T, Apple, and DuPont. Garnett’s background in creative arts, applied mathematics, and market strategy lie behind his thirty-year career running businesses and introducing new consumer products in retail stores.
MARKETING FOR
INNOVATION
CREATE & INTRODUCE NEW PRODUCTS
Discover the new products or services that can grow your business then drive success as they hit the market and finally "stick the landing" during their first 2-5 years in the market.
GROW EXISTING PRODUCTS
Shelf Potatoes are those innovative new products which don't live up to their potential. These products can be brought to life for less money than it takes to create and introduce new innovations.
TAKE PRODUCTS TO NEW MARKETS
Existing products may
have tremendous power
in new markets - like taking professional level tools to consumer markets. The result is high payout at
low development cost.
SERVICES
​Strategy | Market Research | Product Marketing
Sales Development | Communication | Video Marketing
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Clients use my services to bring senior level marketing and business experience into their innovation work or their startups. Ways I can help build your success​:
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Early Stage Innovation or Startup Advising. It's critical to have a marketer who has driven innovation success advise early development.
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Product planning & evaluation. I bring unusual experience determining whether the market will care about your new work along with whether the product can be sold effectively.
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Market exploration and investigation through research. Market research is critical but typical corporate research won't discover the uniquely powerful opportunity. This work must be designed so that, once built, you can be confident the product will sell.
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Communication planning. What should be said? How should it be said? What mediums will carry it best? And who should be saying it? What are the roles (if any) of advertising? Sales teams? PR? These are the keys to initial AND long term success.
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Sales planning and implementation. Whether selling B2C, B2B, or selling into distribution channels, it takes an entrepreneurial approach to build sales team or sales channel strength for innovative efforts and startups.
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The Communication Campaign. Potential customers must come to believe the innovation matters enough to buy it and that it's worth the price — whether in dollars or effort. If they don't know the answers, there is not chance for innovation to succeed.
How can my experience help you and your organization?
Call or email to begin a conversation.