Lele, Milind M. 1944–

(Milind Madhukar Lele)

PERSONAL: Born May 13, 1944, in Jalgaon, India; son of Madhukar Keshav and Kumudini (Kelkar) Lele; married Elizabeth Blair Thrush, April 30, 1994; children: Hari Hugh Milind. Education: University of Pune, B.Sc., 1963; Indian Institute of Science, B.E., 1966; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1971.

ADDRESSES: Office—SLC Consultants, Inc., 1228 Forest Ave., Evanston, IL 60202. E-mail—mlele@strategicleverage.com.

CAREER: Harbridge House, Inc., Boston, MA, principal, 1970–77; SLC Consulting, Inc., Chicago, IL, managing director, 1977–; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, adjunct professor of marketing and strategy, 1983–2000. Has also taught at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1983–84; William E. Simon School, University of Rochester; and Anderson School of Management, University of California at Los Angeles. Member of board of advisors, Flexible Solutions; consultant to numerous companies, including AT&T, Cincinnati Bell Telephone, Motorola, Verizon, Owens Corning, Briggs and Stratton, and U.S. West.

MEMBER: University Club of Chicago.

AWARDS, HONORS: Alumni Gold medal, Indian Institute of Science; selection as one of four best management books, Planning Review, for Creating Strategic Leverage: Matching Company Strengths with Market Opportunities.

WRITINGS:

(With Jagdish N. Sheth) The Customer Is Key: Gaining an Unbeatable Advantage through Customer Satisfaction, J. Wiley (New York, NY), 1987.

Creating Strategic Leverage: Matching Company Strengths with Market Opportunities, J. Wiley (New York, NY), 1992.

Monopoly Rules: How to Find, Capture, and Control the Most Lucrative Markets in Any Business, Crown Business (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Research-Technology Management.

Author's works have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Indonesian, and Finnish.

SIDELIGHTS: A marketing and business strategy consultant to numerous Fortune 500 companies in the United States, Milind M. Lele is considered an expert on improving business practices in such areas as customer service, research and development, and corporate planning. Lele's first book, The Customer Is Key: Gaining an Unbeatable Advantage through Customer Satisfaction, written with Jagdish N. Sheth, is considered to be one of the seminal works on the subject of customer service. Published during the 1980s, a decade often considered an age of corporate greed, the authors then warned business leaders that their companies will fail if they ignore customer needs and neglect to create quality products for them. As they asserted, brand loyalty is a luxury of the past on which long-trusted corporate names can no longer rely, as customers are becoming more savvy about their products and more demanding about quality. "Through extensive field research," noted Janis Newton Cordingley in a Canadian Banker review, "Dr. Lele uncovers a balanced and unbeatable approach to customer satisfaction and superior profitability."

In Monopoly Rules: How to Find, Capture, and Control the Most Lucrative Markets in Any Business Lele sounds an alarm that existing models for creating corporate monopolies are no longer viable in the twenty-first century. A company could once create a monopoly based on cornering certain assets, such as natural resources, products, technologies, brands, or specific customer markets. However, that is no longer the case and companies need to create monopolies that are "situational" and not reliant on a particular product. What this means is that businesses can create a monopoly by exploiting certain changes in the marketplace. One example Lele provides is that of Dell Computers, a company that does not market a unique product but instead became unique by offering online sales of customized PCs and laptops. In order to maintain such monopolies, Lele explains, business leaders need to remain knowledgeable about evolving customer needs and plan accordingly.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August, 2005, Mary Whaley, review of Monopoly Rules: How to Find, Capture, and Control the Most Lucrative Markets in Any Business, p. 1975.

Canadian Banker, November-December, 1992, Janis Newton Cordingley, review of The Customer Is Key: Gaining an Unbeatable Advantage through Customer Satisfaction, p. 62.

ONLINE

SLC Consultants Inc. Web site, http://www.strategicleverage.com/ (November 28, 2005), brief biography of Milind M. Lele.