Some time ago, Paul Klaptocz wrote this (restricted) review of a book “Four Steps to Epiphany”, written by Steve Blank.
Out of interest, I watched through this hour-long lecture by the author, given at Stanford - in which he summarises a range of guest lectures over the year.
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Read this book back in 2007, and wish I had read it earlier – would have saved some heartache!
The post date for this article is not totally a lie – I presented this review at our first shareholders meeting (19th January 2008), which followed the renewal process we underwent in late 2007.
Certainly worth the read:
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “10 Rules for Strategic Innovators” by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble |
 Not perfect, butit’s worth a read |
| Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Hence, Karma would return the benefits to you… |
This book is not perfect, but was (when I read it) confirmation of some of the gut feelings I had about some of the things we had been doing wrong in our business.
The basic principles are as follows:
Principle 1) There are two distinctly different types of company:
(a) Company A type are established companies, where the outcomes for the next year can be thought of as “Current + X%”. With this in mind, management can be focused in a particular way – all about efficiencies, etc…
(b) In complete contrast, Company B type (the authors label them “Strategic Experiments”) have a very uncertain future. Start-ups are one type, and spin-offs another.
Principle 2) The book then delves into the world of Strategic Experiments (NewCo) launched within established businesses (CoreCo) and, after talking through a couple of case studies, concludes that NewCo must do the following three things:
(a) Forget (e.g. find its own culture, which is best done if it is physically separate from CoreCo)
(b) Borrow (e.g. borrow the core expertise of CoreCo, which is best done if it is close by CoreCo).
(c) Learn quickly (by a process of stating hypothesis, testing, refining hypothesis, etc…)
Principle 3) The book then makes a telling point – that performance appraisal in Strategic Experiments should be:
(a) Focused on how quickly NewCo learns from the market response, then adjusts its theories in the light on new information –
(b) Definitely NOT on how closely it meets its targets.
Having been through the process in the early years of the company of (very much so) being a “Strategic Experiment”, I would certainly have liked to have read this book beforehand – and, as a result, not been so obsessed with targets that were total guesses in any case.
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I first read this book perhaps in 2002 or so (in the early days of the company, back when I had some involvement with a consulting company as well).
Hence, to put this review in context, I have used artistic licence with the post date…
Understanding the basic premise of the book (the need to work ON and not IN the business) is worth the cost of the book:
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “The EMyth Revisited” by Michael Gerber |
Worth reading, though it is a little over-hyped (so don’t expect a silver bullet). |
| Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Hence, Karma would return the benefits to you… |
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I read this book back in the days when I had a foot in both camps – i.e. I was actively involved in this company (developing shrink-wrapped software to corporates in a narrow, vertical industry) at the same time as being involved in a consulting company, as well.
The general focus on this book (in terms of process-ising the business for franchising – whether virtual or real) was much more applicable to the consulting company.
For us, we’re trying to go a step further and have much of what we do fully automated (i.e. not outsourced – but completely eliminating the need to have people do certain things). Time will tell how well we do at this!
Still – it’s a very useful exercise to draw an organisation chart and see all the boxes on the chart staring back at you, with your name in it. At least with our recent business autopsy, we have started to change this…