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Business clichés are phrases used either exclusively or very frequently within a business environment. Often they are metaphorical, refering to competitive endeavors such as sports or warfare.
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130 Business cliché topics matching:
Filter this Collection| x name | x image | x Business cliché genre | x Part of speech | x article |
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| x Core competency |
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Alliteration | Noun |
A core competency is a specific factor that a business sees as being central to the way it, or its employees work. It fulfils three key criteria:
A core competency can take various forms, including technical/subject matter know-how, a reliable...
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| x First-mover advantage |
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Noun |
First-mover advantage or FMA is the advantage gained by the initial occupant of a market segment. This advantage may stem from the fact that the first entrant can gain control of resources that followers may not be able to match. Sometimes the first...
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| x Cutting edge |
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Adjective |
A new, usually untested technology or process with the promise of better performance than existing options: "Jim's using some cutting edge macros in his spreadsheet."
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| x Low hanging fruit |
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Sex | Noun |
The easiest thing to be accomplished. As in "pick the low hanging fruit from the tree first."
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| Nature | ||||
| x Open kimono |
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Sex | Adjective |
Reveal internal business secrets to a trusted party, as in "We went open kimono with our potential investors."
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| x Out of pocket |
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Adjective |
To be inaccessible: "I'm going to be out of pocket for the next week while playing golf with my friends in Belize."
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| x Win-win |
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Alliteration | Adjective |
"Win-win" applies to situations where no party loses, as opposed to "zero sum game", where there are both winners and losers, and "lose-lose" where nobody wins.
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| x Push back |
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Verb |
To resist.
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| Noun | ||||
| x Manage expectations |
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Euphemism | Verb | |
| x Take ownership |
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Verb | ||
| x The big picture |
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Noun | ||
| x Take offline |
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Verb |
Discuss a sensitive or highly specific topic individually or in a small group away from a larger group: "Let's take this discussion of the paper towel dispensers offline."
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| x Mission critical |
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Adjective |
The term mission critical (or mission-critical) refers to any factor (equipment, process, procedure, software, etc.) which is crucial to the successful completion of an entire project. It may also refer to a project the success of which is vital to...
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| x Run it up the flagpole |
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Military / war | Verb |
"Let's run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it" is a catchphrase which became popular in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It means "to present an idea tentatively and see whether it receives a favorable reaction."...
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| x Touch base |
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Sports | Verb |
Synchronizing information. Checking in.In baseball, a player who is touching a base is not in danger of being put out.
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| x Individual contributor |
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Euphemism | Noun | |
| x Need to lead |
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Noun | ||
| x Add value |
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Verb | ||
| x Trial balloon |
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Noun |
Information sent out in order to observe the reaction of an audience: "We announce we were releasing an updated model of our XM-5 Jackhammer next year as a trial balloon to see if there was any interest from our customers."
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| x Hit it out of the park |
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Sports | Verb | |
| x Circle back |
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Verb | ||
| x Action item |
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Noun |
In Management, an action item is a documented event, task, activity, or action that needs to take place. Action items are discrete units that can be handled by a single person.
Action items are usually created during a discussion by a group of...
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| x Key driver | Noun | |||
| x Cross the chasm |
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Nature | Verb |
From Geoffrey Moore's book "Crossing the Chasm" where he argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product and the early majority. Generally, the task of acquring early adopters.
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| Alliteration | ||||
| x Think outside the box |
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Verb |
Thinking outside the box is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel, creative and smart thinking.
This is sometimes called a process of lateral thought. The catchphrase, or cliché, has...
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| x Paradigm shift |
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Pseudointellectual | Noun |
Paradigm shift (or revolutionary science) is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast...
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| x Six Sigma |
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Alliteration | Noun |
Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola. As of 2009, it enjoys widespread application in many sectors of industry, although its application is not without controversy.
Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of...
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| x Productize |
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Verbized |
To make something into a product.
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| x Synergism |
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Pseudointellectual |
Synergism, in general, may be defined as two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently. The word synergy or synergism comes from two Greek words: erg meaning "to work", and syn meaning ...
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| x Value proposition |
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Pseudointellectual | Noun | |
| x Go-to-market strategy |
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Noun |
The methods that a business uses for taking its products to a broader market. Particularly for high-volume or low-margin products, the go-to-market strategy may involve sales channels and distributors. For startup companies, the go-to-market...
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| x Early adopter |
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Noun |
An early adopter is an early customer of a given company, product, or technology.
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| x Monetize |
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Verbized | Verb |
Means "To make revenue from" in as in the sentence, "Facebook has yet to figure out how to monetize their 55 million users." It used to mean the process of physically making money (like governments do), but it is rarely used in that that context...
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| x Value added |
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In economics, the difference between cost of materials and labor to produce a product, and the sale price of a product is the value added. In national accounts used in macroeconomics, it refers to the contribution of the factors of production, i.e.,...
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| x Escalation |
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Noun |
Escalation is the process of notifying your supervisor/boss regarding a problem you are facing with another party in the organization that operates at roughly the same level as you. A mutual escalation occurs when both parties can't agree on a...
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| x Zero sum game |
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"Zero sum game", as opposed to a "win-win situation", is used to suggest that if someone wins, someone else loses.
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| x Bring to the table |
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An offer made during a negotiation or a give-and-take situation.
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| x Workforce reduction |
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Euphemism | Noun |
A "workforce reduction" is an American euphamism for layoff, or no-fault involuntary termination of employment.
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| x Grassroots marketing |
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Grassroots marketing is a non-traditional marketing approach whose goal is to reach out directly to key audiences and build strong customer relationships. Grassroots marketing often relies on new media, and aims to create a "buzz" around...
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| x Team player |
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“We just need you to be a team player on this one".
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| x Heads up |
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| x Bricks and clicks |
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Bricks-and-clicks is a business model by which a company integrates both offline (bricks) and online (clicks) presences. It is also known as click-and-mortar or clicks-and-bricks, as well as bricks, clicks and flips, flips referring to catalogs. One...
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| x Customer engagement |
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Customer engagement (CE) refers to the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline.
Unlike marketing...
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| x Relanguage |
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| x Information touchpoint |
Any contact
in which information is shared or transferred. Yes, meetings are
information touchpoints.
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| x Critical path |
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| x Secret sauce |
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| x Barriers to entry |
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In economics and mostly especially in the theory of competition, barriers to entry are obstacles in the path of a firm that make it difficult to enter a given market.
Barriers to entry are the source of a firm's pricing power - the ability of a firm...
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| x Slam dunk |
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Sports | Noun |
A slam dunk (or simply a dunk) is a type of basketball shot that is performed when a player jumps in the air and manually powers the ball downward through the basket with one or both hands over the rim. This is considered a normal field goal attempt...
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| x It's a No-Brainer |
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| x Maximize potentialities | ||||
| x Resources |
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Noun |
In business-speak people are described as resources. As in "we need more resources on that" or "that project is under-resourced, cant we get more resources on that?". Rarely do business types mention the individuals who are doing the...
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| x Stakeholders |
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As originally detailed by R. Edward Freeman (1984), stakeholder theory identifies and models the groups which are stakeholders of a corporation, and both describes and recommends methods by which management can give due regard to the interests of...
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| x Getting ahead of the curve |
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It is unclear which curve its important to get ahead of, but if you get too far ahead you may end up on the "bleeding edge". They again you certainly dont want to be "behind the curve".
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| x Sharpen your pencil |
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In negotiations, sharpening a pencil means getting to a better number, as in "we will go back and sharpen our pencils on this and get back to you". Its a face saving cliche which signals willingness to renegotiate based on some perceived new...
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| x Eat one's own dog food |
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Eating one's own dog food, also called dogfooding, means that a company uses the products that it makes. Dogfooding can be a way for a company to demonstrate confidence in its own products, and hence a kind of testimonial advertising.For example,...
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| x Downsize |
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Euphemism | Verb |
Euphemism for laying people off en masse.
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| x Do your homework |
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| x Buying in |
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Buying in has several meanings:
On the English stock exchange, a transaction by which, if a member has sold securities which he fails to deliver on settling day, or any of the succeeding ten days following the settlement, the buyer may give...
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| x Core constituency | Alliteration | |||
