Vince Barabba
Retired General Manager, Corporate Strategy & Knowledge Management, General Motors

A critical first step in developing proven VOC practices that will exceed customer expectations is to ensure that there is coherence and consensus between those who collect information and how decision makers view the context surrounding the VOC information and how it relates to product and marketing decisions.

Mr. Barabba will describe three prototypical business designs that highlight the differences in alternative points of view held by decision makers.  These three approaches, make-and-sell, sense-and-respond, and anticipate-and-lead, anchor the ends of a continuum that encompasses the worlds of simplicity/certainty and complexity/uncertainty as well as a midpoint that offers a point of view to help clarify the opportunities found at the ends of the continuum.

The importance of getting clarity between these two groups will be highlighted with specific focus on:

• Aligning VOC practices to avoid post information collection regret

• Specific forms of knowledge and how they fit into alternative knowledge management practices

About Vince Barabba
Vince Barabba recently retired as general manager, Corporate Strategy and Knowledge Development, General Motors Corporation, where he was responsible for overseeing Corporate Strategic Planning and the Business Decision Support Center. Prior to his work at GM, Barabba had been director, market intelligence, for Eastman Kodak. He twice served as director of the Bureau of the Census, and is the only person to serve in that position under the administration of different political parties. He is the author of Meeting of the Minds (1995 Harvard Business School Press), and co-author of Hearing the Voice of the Market (1991 Harvard Business School Press) and The 1980 Census: Policy Making Amid Turbulence (1983 Lexington Books). His latest book is, Surviving Transformation: Lessons learned from GM’s surprising turnaround (Oxford University Press, 2004). Barabba received a bachelor's degree in marketing from California State University at Northridge and an M.B.A. in marketing from the University of California at Los Angeles, in 1964.