How an academic theory was transformed into a commercial brand and a sweeping business movement.
OVERVIEW
Branding of products, retail chains, sports teams, musical groups, broadcasting networks, even Internet social media is an established part of the global landscape. But how can something as intangible as a concept be given a brand identity? That’s exactly what business producer Elizabeth Kanna did. Kanna who helps transform and position business clients for market leadership, helped distill an academic business theory called “performance-based outsourcing” into a marketable brand—Vested Outsourcing—that is applicable to virtually any commercial service- or product-based industry.
THE CHALLENGE
In 2007, the U.S. Air Force asked the University of Tennessee (UT) Center for Executive Education to develop a “performance-based outsourcing” methodology to structure performance-based agreements for logistics and maintenance contracts for weapons systems. Kate Vitasek, lead researcher for UT performance-based programs, recognized the potential for commercial application of the methodology that she helped devise.
• Vitasek and her colleagues believed that they could evolve their methodology into a movement with transformative potential rivaling that of the Six Sigma business management strategy or lean manufacturing practices.
• Vitasek formed a company to oversee the commercial introduction of the concept.
• But Vitasek and her colleagues concluded that they needed the guidance of an specialist from the private sector with expertise in product positioning and marketing.
• She appointed renowned business producer Elizabeth Kanna to guide the company launch, develop naming and marketing recommendations, and prepare and oversee a long-range implementation plan.
THE SOLUTION
Elizabeth Kanna’s began by renaming this new methodology. Recognizing the persuasive power of names to build confidence, Kanna conceived the name Vested Outsourcing, which symbolically articulates the relationship between participating parties, each of whom has a vested interest in the success of the venture.
• Kanna asserts that the best way to define and claim leadership in an industry is to write the definitive book about it.
• Kanna engineered the deal with the publisher—which is becoming a book series of related publications. Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules That Will Transform Outsourcing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; ISBN-10: 0230623174; ISBN-13: 978-0230623170).
• Kanna formulated a comprehensive marketing and publicity strategy that has generated ink in the nation’s leading business periodicals, trade publications and major daily newspapers, along with airtime on local and nationwide radio and television talk programs, Internet blogs, social media messaging and other communication channels.
THE RESULTS
Working with Kate Vitasek and the Vested Outsourcing team, Elizabeth Kanna has helped breathe life into dry, military-sponsored research, renamed it and repackaged it for commercial consumption, and fast-tracked it on the pathway to industry prominence and adoption. Leaders in various industries have taken notice of the book Vested Outsourcing. The book presents five key rules to a successful outsourcing agreement, setting the stage for true vested partnerships that can yield massive potential benefits for both parties.
• Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules irrefutably cast Kate Vitasek as the leading authority and a sought-after speaker in the field.
• Tim McBride, chief procurement officer for Microsoft Inc., said “Applying Vested Outsourcing’s Five Rules has the power to change the game of outsourcing.”
• Frank Casale, CEO of the Outsourcing Institute, declared, “Vested Outsourcing is a game-changing approach that will quickly become the new gold standard for advanced outsourcing relationships. It is a critical enabler for Outsourcing 2.0.”
• Cliff Lynch, author of Logistics Outsourcing: A Management Guide, observed, “In the outsourcing world, a genuinely new concept comes along only once every 10 years or so. I believe Vested Outsourcing is one of them.”
• Rob Guerriere, an active member of the Wall Street Journal online group “Global Trade Best Practices,” wrote about how the Vested Outsourcing approach can create a supply chain competitive advantage.
• Vested Outsourcing was featured as the cover story in the September 2008 issue of Supply and Demand Chain Executive. And Vested Outsourcing made the Top 10 Logistics Viewpoints list of most popular postings for 2009.
• Vested Outsourcing is being piloted by Microsoft, Intel and other Fortune 100 companies.
• Palgrave Macmillan anticipates 3 more books in the Vested Outsourcing book series alone within the next two to three years.
