The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (And What to do About It) Review

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The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (And What to do About It) ReviewAs a strategy consultant, I'm always on the look out for the next book to either recommend to my clients, or that they are likely to gravitate towards, to be prepared with my opinion when asked about the work. And since I have been a fan of Clay Christensen and disruption theory and was looking forward to see what Raynor would do on his own. Thanks goodness for a relaxing the long weekend so I could finally make the time for this.
Also, I have never written a review before. Since I really liked the book and there seemed to be few comments yet doing it justice, I figured I would cut my teeth on this one.
Generally, I have to agree with the HBR review -- he's a disruptive thinker in his own right: this is an approach to corporate strategy that is new, combining the merits of commitment-based strategy with the inescapable need for flexibility. I am looking forward to practically applying the core concepts on behalf of my clients.
The Strategy Paradox: Hidden in Plain Sight
Raynor begins by demonstrating what many of us have long suspected but weren't able to come out and say: when it comes to traditional strategic planning, the emperor has no clothes. Established frameworks -- from Ansoff to Porter to Hamel to, for that matter, Christensen, are premised on an ability to decide today what will be successful tomorrow. We're told again and again that the future will yield its secrets if only we're smart enough and our analysis is rigorous enough.
But prediction is a dark art at best: the data are always ambiguous. Personally, I've never seen a single path forward as clearly the best choice. This means that unfortunately, the most successful strategies are necessarily based on big commitments: it is fine to want to be "agile" and commit only once the data are clear, but the company that guesses right in the face of ambiguity will always outperform the "wait and see" approach of the adapative enterprise.
And so you have to commit big if you want to win big, but when you commit big you create the risk of losing big. That's the Strategy Paradox: the same strategic positions that hold out the promise of extreme success create the possibility of extreme failure.
Raynor demonstrates this both anecdotally and with a truly extraordinary large-scale data set. Anecdotally, in Chapter 2 Raynor has a totally new take on Sony's Betamax and MiniDisc fiascos. The tendency is to look at strategic failures such as these and conclude that the perpetrators were just plain dumb. What Raynor shows is that the strategic choices made, at the time they were made, were perfectly reasonable. Better still, Raynor shows that the opposite choices -- the ones made by Matsuhshita (VHS) and Apple (iPod) respectively were also perfectly reasonable. And that's the point: the future is uncertain, but you have to commit if you want to win big. A "take-it-as-it-comes" approach might have avoided catastrophe, but at the cost of having any real hope of real success. The ultimate winners are determined by the outcomes of unpredictable future events -- in other words, luck.
Raynor then shows that this is not just a one-shot thing. In Chapter 3, drawing on fascinating survey data, he shows that companies with clear cost leadership or product differentiation strategic positions deliver higher average returns than firms that are "stuck in the middle". In other words, big commitments made extreme success much likelier. Now the bad news: those same "extreme" strategic positions have much higher frequency of bankruptcy. Raynor has identified true "strategic" uncertainty -- the risk attached the pursuit of a specific strategy. And it turns out that the better returns that come with commitment-based strategies come at the cost of a higher risk of failure. Raynor's Strategy Paradox is not just a theoretical proposition -- it is a general, empirical fact. I'm left to conclude that, as Raynor says, everything we know about strategy is true, but it's "dangerously incomplete". (I love the drama he infuses into my strategy discussions with clients and colleagues!)
So, there's a risk/return trade-off in strategy. Is this news? I think so: there is no strategy book before now that qualifies its advice on achieving greatness with the caveat that you're also increasing your chance of total failure. In fact, much of strategic thinking is based on the idea that higher returns are correlated with lower variance in returns, and so risk and return are inversely correlated. But these findings are polluted with survivor bias, something Raynor's data correct for, perhaps for the first time. By identifying and empirically substantiating the risk/return tradeoff in strategic planning, Raynor has made a material contribution to the field.
I was convinced that better prediction isn't the answer; if you're not, Raynor spends Chapter 5 talking about why we'll never be able to predict the future with the necessary accuracy, drawing heavily (and respectfully) on the work of N. N. Taleb and Stephen Wolfram in particular.
I was more sceptical of Raynor's claims that the "organizational adaptation" school didn't hold a useful answer, either, but I was largely won over, if only because, as Raynor points out, the adaptation school hasn't done a very good job of defining its own boundaries. In Chapter 4 Raynor begins to sketch out, for the first time, as far as I can tell, what those limits might be, and through this makes it clear that a better answer is needed.
Growth Options vs. Strategic Options
The commentary the book has received on this site doesn't seem to me to describe accurately the true nature of "Strategic Flexibility." Some have described it simply a "portfolio of alternatives" or a way to "invest small in uncertain ventures." This misses the point. Raynor is describing a way for different product groups or divisions in a company to make their own high-intensity commitments yet collectively face lower strategic uncertainty.
For example, in Chapter 7, MSFT in 1988, draws on Beinhocker (Origin of Wealth) but extends it. MSFT's portfolio was more than just different forays into the OS space: each division created capabilities that could be recombined to create a more effective OS strategy than was being explored by any given division. So, for instance, the company was exploring enterprise markets with Unix, consumer markets with Windows, and commercial markets with OS/2. This was not merely covering different bets; it was covering only those bets that could both survive on their own -- and so have growth option value -- and, depending on how the world turned out, be recombined to create a new strategy in the OS market -- and so have strategic option value.
This distinction, between growth options and strategic options, is a significant contribution to the real options field. Raynor's Chapter 7 discussion of BCE (a Canadian telecoms company), brought the difference into focus for me. Growth options are essentially attempts to "run away" from your core business. So, if you're Enron and you think pipelines are boring and in decline, you get into energy trading as a way to pull yourself up by your bootstraps get out of that business. Trading is simply a "growth option" -- an option on entirely new growth trajectories.
Strategic options, on the other hand, are new businesses that are created in order to potentially reinvent and extend your existing core business. BCE got into systems consulting, e-commerce, and media, but not to escape its core telecoms operations; rather, BCE diversified in order to keep open the possibility of reinvigorating the core. At the corporate level, BCE didn't commit to these new initiatives, taking partial equity stakes in a number of different companies that it could dial up or down as circumstances warranted. But at the operating division level, those firms were entirely committed to achieving their own success.
As different market conditions or technologies evolved, BCE would be able to "exercise" its "strategic options" and completely change the strategy of the core telecoms unit but -- and this is the brilliant part -- without ever having had the core telecoms unit attempt to change itself. What Raynor also convinced me of is that strategic options are not an attempt to capture synergies. Strategic options aren't businesses that ARE related, they're businesses that might BECOME related. Strategic options create capabilities the core operations might need, often by forcing the corporate parent to invest in industries it doesn't understand. BCE had a portfolio of high-commitment strategies, but because each created strategic options -- not just a growth option -- for the others, the company as a whole had created a lower strategic risk profile.Uncertainty and Strategic Flexibility
In the end, BCE wasn't able to follow through on its strategy, largely because, according to Raynor, the strategy was largely intuitive, and was not guided by a clear set of frameworks. That's something Raynor sets out to remedy, developing two powerful concepts largely through a case study of Johnson & Johnson that occupies all of chapter 8.
The first part of the solution is Requisite Uncertainty, described first in chapter 6, which is a powerful synthesis of Elliott Jacques's work on hierarchy with Raynor's insight into strategic uncertainty. He provides a powerful distinction between competitive strategy and corporate strategy: competitive strategy lives in the operating units, and is about generating returns; corporate strategy is about managing uncertainty by creating a portfolio of the necessary strategic and growth options.
The reason...Read more›The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (And What to do About It) OverviewA compelling vision.Bold leadership.Decisive action.Unfortunately, these prerequisites of success are almost always the ingredients of failure, too.In fact, most managers seeking to maximize their chances for glory are often unwittingly setting themselves up for ruin.The sad truth is that most companies have left their futures almost entirely to chance, and don't even realize it.The reason?Managers feel they must make choices with far-reaching consequences today, but must base those choices on assumptions about a future they cannot predict.It is this collision between commitment and uncertainty that creates THE STRATEGY PARADOX.This paradox sets up a ubiquitous but little-understood tradeoff.Because managers feel they must base their strategies on assumptions about an unknown future, the more ambitious of them hope their guesses will be right – or that they can somehow adapt to the turbulence that will arise.In fact, only a small number of lucky daredevils prosper, while many more unfortunate, but no less capable managers find themselves at the helms of sinking ships.Realizing this, even if only intuitively, most managers shy away from the bold commitments that success seems to demand, choosing instead timid, unremarkable strategies, sacrificing any chance at greatness for a better chance at mere survival.Michael E. Raynor, coauthor of the bestselling The Innovator's Solution, explains how leaders can break this tradeoff and achieve results historically reserved for the fortunate few even as they reduce the risks they must accept in the pursuit of success.In the cutthroat world of competitive strategy, this is as close as you can come to getting something for nothing.Drawing on leading-edge scholarship and extensive original research, Raynor's revolutionary principle of Requisite Uncertainty yields a clutch of critical, counter-intuitive findings.Among them:-- The Board should not evaluate the CEO based on the company's performance, but instead on the firm's strategic risk profile-- The CEO should not drive results, but manage uncertainty-- Business unit leaders should not focus on execution, but on making strategic choices-- Line managers should not worry about strategic risk, but devote themselves to delivering on commitmentsWith detailed case studies of success and failure at Sony, Microsoft, Vivendi Universal, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T and other major companies in industries from financial services to energy, Raynor presents a concrete framework for strategic action that allows companies to seize today's opportunities while simultaneously preparing for tomorrow's promise.

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An Introduction To Enterprise Architecture: Second Edition Review

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An Introduction To Enterprise Architecture: Second Edition ReviewThis book provides a cursory treatment of a deep subject. At barely 250 pages of main body text--and they are small pages at that, set in a generous type--there is no room to go into detail on much of anything. You will learn, perhaps, what a dataflow diagram or an IDEF0 frame is, but you will certainly not learn how to create or manipulate them, or much about how to use them, or their relative strengths and weaknesses, beyond the casual sentence or two about any given model in this book. And, look, I love diagrams, but it seems like every third illustration is this book is a reprint or an absolutely trivial variation on the author's "EA Cube" overview diagram. You can see it on the front cover--it's not exactly as complicated as the human nervous system. Once or twice would have done it for me. Shallow? I slosh through deeper puddles on a rainy day.
But the shining feature of this book is the "case study" of a company adopting the particular flavor of Enterprise Architecture that Scott Bernard is trying to sell, something called EA3. He follows this ficticious company through the entire course of the book, costing a substantial fraction of the already meager pagecount. What would you expect such a case study to entail, dear reader? Maybe some process diagrams, data entity schemas, architecture documents...you know, an ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE for the example company? Sadly, the joke is on us. None of this is forthcoming. The "case study" consists almost entirely of descriptions of meetings where everybody talks about the wonderful things they're going to do with this new enterprise architecture, followed by more meetings where everybody congatulates each other on the wonderful things they've just done thanks to enterprise architecture. Like the rest of the book, there is just no "there" there. Actual models? No room! Sample documents? No time! Any business school or MIS student who tried to hand in this pollyanna sales pitch as a "case study" would only get an F because the grade scale doesn't go to "G."
Perhaps the only value in this book is that, if read critically, it will teach you a great deal about why "Enterprise Architecture" has such a poor reputation in certain sectors of industry today. I really think that a lot of EA is about self-aggrandizement on the part of IT professionals, who think the entire business should revolve around their pretty diagrams and three-ring binders. We in the IT community need to get our minds right: we are here to support and enable the business, not impede it or, worse, subordinate it to its tools. If something like Enterprise Architecture is good for business, then we need to find ways to do it that don't involve saying to the people we are supposed to be helping: "Wait! Stop what you're doing and redefine everything you do according to MY methodology!" Read the first five pages of the "case study" in this book to see the new CIO do EXACTLY THAT. He should have been laughed out of the boardroom.
An Introduction To Enterprise Architecture: Second Edition Overview

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Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World Review

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Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World ReviewI had high expectations for this book based on Tapscott's prior work, the fact that this is based on a multi million-dollar study, and that Net Generation is coming into the workforce. I did not think that my expectations were too high, but I may be wrong, as Grown Up Digital did not deliver for me. It is long on description and short on prescription.
It's a good book, but not one that shapes your thinking like Tapscott's Wikinomics book, nor does it break significant new ground relative to all the other books covering this subject. I put this book down several times for weeks, to read other books, so it is more of a reference than a must read.
I would recommend reading Plugged In by Tamara Erickson as I think it's a better business book, one that is more focused and more valuable to readers than Grown Up Digital. I reviewed that book as well and found some issues, but it provides a more succinct, actionable and insightful focus - which were things that I had hoped for here.

Strengths:
The book is comprehensive in its description and treatment of the Net Generation and describing this generation as a group with its own values and behaviors that will have in impact on society.
The book looks at the Net Generation from different perspectives in terms of their impact on the workplace, society, education, etc.
The book provides some brief caricatures of the net generation so they are able to speak in their own words what is going on.
Challenges:
The primary challenge is the books single dimensional view of the net generation in terms of their adoption and use of technology. It does not take into account that this group grew up under a period of relative social, political and economic stability. Nor does it consider the future of being anything but a straight-line progression of the world in 2006. The economic conditions will be definitional to this generation, but unending growth and prosperity was an assumption beneath this book.
The book treats this generation as a single block; they are all well educated, western leaning, capitalism supporting, environmentally conscious individuals. Such stereotyping does not take into account the fact that any generation is made up of diverse people, with different backgrounds, needs and ambitions. I had hoped that the breadth of Tapscotts research would have done more than paint every net generation person the same.
The book repeats itself using the same assertions as answers for the different chapters. The fact that the net generation wants choice, customization, freedom and the like are all true, but Tapscott uses choice as the answer for every problem ranging from the workplace to society. That broad brush is too simplistic.
The book fawns over the net generation believing that they can do no wrong. This is a critical challenge in the book, as Tapscott does not seem able to look at this generation from an unbiased perspective. You see this in Tapscotts' response to people who have been critical of this generation; he basically dismisses these comments or explains them away. He labels people who have a less than rosey view as nGenerationphobic -- this labeling is a bad sign not found in his other work. Tapscott has personalized the 'do no wrong" in this generation throughout the book by referring to his children as the epitome of this generation and all that it can do. That personalization limits his objectivity and colors the value of the insights.
Tapscott frequently refers to his project being `definitive on this generation' however he does not show much if any of the data from this multi-million dollar study. He does quote data from other people's studies to the degree that it supports his argument. It would have been nice to see some of the data that is so definitive.
The whole issue of the Net Generation has been the focus of Don Tapscott's work for most of his career. I was hoping for more in this book, the result of a multi-million dollar study that seeks to be definitional about this generation. I have great hopes for the Net Generation, as do we all. This book is helpful in understanding that generation, but not powerful enough to define a generation that holds the future in their hands.Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World Overview
SELECTED AS A 2008 BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST
The Net Generation Has Arrived. Are you ready for it?

Chances are you know a person between the ages of 11 and 30. You've seen them doing five things at once: texting friends, downloading music, uploading videos, watching a movie on a two-inch screen, and doing who-knows-what on Facebook or MySpace. They're the first generation to have literally grown up digital--and they're part of a global cultural phenomenon that's here to stay.

The bottom line is this: If you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future.

If you're a Baby Boomer or Gen-Xer: This is your field guide.

A fascinating inside look at the Net Generation, Grown Up Digital is inspired by a $4 million private research study. New York Times bestselling author Don Tapscott has surveyed more than 11,000 young people. Instead of a bunch of spoiled "screenagers" with short attention spans and zero social skills, he discovered a remarkably bright community which has developed revolutionary new ways of thinking, interacting, working, and socializing.

Grown Up Digital reveals:

How the brain of the Net Generation processes information
Seven ways to attract and engage young talent in the workforce
Seven guidelines for educators to tap the Net Gen potential
Parenting 2.0: There's no place like the new home
Citizen Net: How young people and the Internet are transforming democracy

Today's young people are using technology in ways you could never imagine. Instead of passively watching television, the "Net Geners" are actively participating in the distribution of entertainment and information. For the first time in history, youth are the authorities on something really important. And they're changing every aspect of our society-from the workplace to the marketplace, from the classroom to the living room, from the voting booth to the Oval Office.

The Digital Age is here. The Net Generation has arrived. Meet the future.


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Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want Review

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Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want Review
This is the latest in a series of several books (notably The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage and Markets of One: Creating Customer-Unique Value through Mass Customization) in which James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine focus on what Peter Drucker once identified as one of the greatest challenges any business faces: How to get and then keep profitable customers? Their thesis in this latest volume is that marketers need to address the problem of managing "the perceptions of real or fake held by the consumer's of [an] enterprise's output - because people increasingly make purchase decisions based on how real or fake they perceive offerings. These perceptions flow directly from how well any particular offering conforms to a customer's self-image."
In this volume, Gilmore and Pine examine "the authenticity of economic offerings, not the authenticity of individuals in personal relationships, something people also greatly desire but the subject of many other tomes." They cite two exemplars in particular - Disney and Starbucks - because no company "has more affected our collective view of what is real and what is not" than has Disney. As for Starbucks, no other company "more explicitly manages its perception of authenticity, making direct appeals to authenticity in every way" Gilmore and Pine define this new discipline.
Here are some of the specific issues they address with rigor and eloquence:
1. The appeal of "real"
2. The drivers of the new consumer sensibility
3. Three axioms of authenticity
4. Five genres of authenticity
5. Two "time-honored standards" of authenticity
6. Ten elements of authenticity
7. How to be what you say you are
8. How to continue to be "true to self"
9. The nature, extent, and interaction of five key "real/fake polarities"
10. How to sustain the authenticity of what is offered
Decision-makers in any organization (regardless of its size or nature) are provided a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective program by which to address and resolve these and other issues. Of course, even if Gilmore and Pine were in residence, actively involved in the design and implementation of such a program, assistance, it cannot succeed unless the given offering is and remains inherently authentic, That is, it fully meets (if not exceeds) the given consumer's perceptions of the benefits claimed for it.Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want Overview

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Entrepreneur Journeys v.3: Positioning: How To Test, Validate, And Bring Your Idea To Market (Volume 3) Review

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Entrepreneur Journeys v.3: Positioning: How To Test, Validate, And Bring Your Idea To Market (Volume 3) Review
I liked this book very much. In its appendix the following questions are listed regarding competitive positioning and pricing:
>>Who is the competition, and how do you differentiate from them?
>>What are the various classes of products in immediate and related categories?
>>Which, of those, compete directly with you?
>>Which ones are likely to move into your space?
>>How do your product features compare with the competition's? Can you compete on the basis of functionality?
>>How does your product pricing compare with the competition's? Can you compete on the basis of price?
>>How do customers and prospects view your offering, vis-à-vis competition? Do they see you as one-tenth the functionality? One-fifth the functionality? 300% the functionality?
>>What value does the customer see?
>>What are the customers willing to pay for your solution? One-tenth the key competitor's price? Same price? 200% the price?
>>What price can you charge based on perceived value?
>>What is the ROI for the customer? How long will it take to realize the ROI?
>>Can you offer both better performance and lower price?
>>Whom do you need to partner with to offer a full solution?
>>How do you position win-win deals for partners?
>>Can you turn some of the competition to partners/channel/OEM relationships, so as not to go head-to-head?
After reading these questions you should have a pretty good idea as to what this book is about. There is such a thing as Total Available Market ("TAM"). And the subject of this book , i.e., Positioning, is all about being able to segment the TAM your company wants to operate in and be able to identify a well-defined market opportunity involving one or more segments therein. By segmenting a TAM you should be able to create and focus on a cost-efficient go-to-market strategy that can be used in your startup's written business plan. Entrepreneurs who can "Position" well see with clear vision how their startups are going to succeed and be able to find the low-hanging fruit and pick it. Entrepreneurship is all about minimizing risk and making profits at the same time. Do your research. Do your planning. Strategize on known facts - don't guess. And if you focus you will succeed.
For me this book was comprised of a prologue, an epilogue, and 16 interviews of entrepreneurs who are skilled at positioning. I recommend one read the prologue and epilogue first, and then casually read the interviews. This book is not a How-To on how to actually segment markets. It is a book that will help you to understand that markets can be segmented and that only some of those segments are worth pursuing and others are not.
In my humble opinion, this book will be a valuable addition to any entrepreneur who is still trying to master the art of creating quality business plans that can be used to create a successful startup. Positioning is just one aspect of writing a sound business plan, but it is a critical one. 5 stars!Entrepreneur Journeys v.3: Positioning: How To Test, Validate, And Bring Your Idea To Market (Volume 3) Overview

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Out of The Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services Review

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Out of The Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services ReviewThe story in web services to date has been told by the technologists. That is why we see an endless supply of articles about XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and the rest of the WSxL alphabet soup. Ditto for the .NET vs. Java wars. It's time to transition from architectures and protocols to business models - how does any of this help to run a business faster, better, cheaper? Enter John Hagel, who spent sixteen years as a Partner with McKinsey, and has recently set up his own consultancy company.
Hagel starts by noting that web services is the first IT technology which supports an organic and self-adaptive organisational model of the enterprise. Hagel introduces "the Service Grid". Above the computing and network protocols there is a conceptually-distinct layer of functionality which has to be there to make web services fly. We need solutions to problems such as: security; transaction integrity; billing; orchestration of functions; and in particular ontologies - the standardisation of the meanings of entities and attributes within and between businesses. (Note the "semantic web" activity in W3C).
Many people assume web services are just a re-run of the "application service provision" experiment we saw a couple of years ago. In chapter 3, Hagel provides an excellent review of the ASP wave, the business requirements which drove it and the reasons why the experiment failed. Business were keen to move from a license to a subscription model, they wanted to use enterprise application services without investing in technology and operations. But CIOs were worried about the performance and security of Internet-provided applications, and concerned that if ASPs went out of business, their own companies would be left in a lurch (and the CIO would lose his/her job!).
Although the technologies of web services are still in their infancy, some people out there are using them. In chapters 4 and 5, Hagel describes Dell's continuous improvement of its supply chain using web service interfaces to talk with its supplier systems. He points out that existing applications can be upgraded to expose their interfaces as web services to support new business processes relatively easily and cheaply.
Generalizing from his Dell example, Hagel argues that web services will be introduced from the edge of the enterprise, later penetrating the core. The "edge" is that part of the enterprise which deals with the environment: customers, suppliers, partners. The alternative view is that web services will see early introduction within the enterprise itself, as CIOs exploit the power of web service interfaces to kick-start enterprise application automation (EAI) for legacy systems, which to-date has been just too difficult, costly and time-consuming.
In chapter 6, Hagel uses the examples of Cisco and Nike to examine "process networks". The situation where an orchestrator (dominant company with market power) controls the activities of a veritable keiretsu of partners in its industry value-net. Not via micro-management or direct administrative power, more through "certification, coaching, promoting or dropping based on overall partnership performance".
In chapter 7 Hagel turns his attention to the enterprise itself. Most enterprises, Hagel observes, are coalitions of three very different kinds of business. Firstly a customer relationship business focused on "share of wallet" (customer-centric); secondly an operations business focused on low-cost, economies of scale and routine (process-centric); and thirdly a product development business focused on creativity and innovation (new-product-centric). These three business types have different drivers, cultures and types of people. Many commentators have pointed out that enterprises have to decide if their focus is to be "customers, price or product" and that it's foolhardy to try to be a bit of everything.
Why not unbundle these functions into separate enterprises? Conventionally the answer is that excessive transaction costs load the scales in favour of retaining vertical integration of these functions. However, visionaries have long argued that eBusiness, with its dramatically decreased transaction costs, will permit a generalised outsourcing model leading in the limit to the virtual corporation. Hagel's view is that rather than atomization of enterprises, we can expect to see significant consolidation, particularly in the areas of customer relationship and operations-focused companies, where strong economies of scale exist.
Concluding, Hagel has a vision of the web-services-enabled company moving over a period to a fluid, decoupled "process-network"-type architecture. I imagine this will work for some companies and not for others. Company architectures are solutions to multiple complex constraints, and web services modify the parameters of some of them, but leave others unchanged.
Conclusion
John Hagel writes in the fluid style of the McKinsey consultant, short sentence constructions embedding abstract nouns and appropriately well-judged adjectives. But it's so bland that at the end of a long day, one can barely keep one's eyes moving along the lines of the pages. It's hard to know what to advise. The parts which read best are the case studies, where the arguments are locked into real experiences. Perhaps the problem is that the ratio of ideas to words is just too low.
Is this a book about business trends or is it a book about web services? There is a reasonably familiar story about eBusiness, the "frictionless economy" and the industry-architectural consequences of increased service velocity and very low transactional costs. Anyone who has looked at web services has experienced the "aha" feeling that at last we know what will actually make eBusiness work.
Except that eBusiness and web services are both very much works in progress. We don't know exactly how web services will transform business, and we don't know exactly how the needs of eBusiness will shape and form web services. This book is a great scene-setter at some level of generality, (although it is too long), but it flies a little high over the terrain, and we don't seem to see where the major issues will be over the next two to three years. I guess that book remains to be written.Out of The Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services OverviewManagers today are understandably skeptical of the promises of new technologies. During the 1990s, vendors of both enterprise applications and Internet platforms promised enormous benefits. Companies invested large sums, but the benefits either failed to materialize, or came at a high price. Managers sacrificed flexibility and struggled to collaborate with business partners - a crippling disadvantage in today's marketplace. Now, leading business strategist John Hagel III has a refreshing message for managers burned by over-hyped technologies, yet pressured to find innovative ways to deliver more value with fewer resources. He focuses on a new generation of technology - known as Web services. This technology connects existing IT platforms in more automated and flexible ways, leading to much lower operating costs. The premise is practical and devoid of "change the world" promises. That very pragmatism, says Hagel, will drive enterprises to adopt it.In this book, he provides a clear view of the business implications of Web services: its distinct capabilities, its power to deliver near-term profits, and its potential to drive long-term growth.Drawing from the experiences of pioneering adopters, Hagel shows how Web services will enable companies of all sizes to: realize bottom-line savings quickly with modest investment; leverage investments in existing applications and create more flexibility; target specific areas for near-term cost reduction; establish-or leave-business relationships fluidly and inexpensively; and, create leveraged growth platforms for long-term competitiveness.A landmark book for CEOs, strategists, and IT managers, "Out of the Box" addresses near-term cost concerns and requirements for future success. As it discusses Web services, it provides deep insights into business strategy. At its core, this book tackles the most fundamental business issue facing managers today: how to continue to create value as competition intensifies. It also outlines innovative approaches to business process management and organization. John Hagel III is a business consultant based in Silicon Valley, and is coauthor of two best-selling books, "Net Gain and Net Worth". He has served as a senior executive with various technology companies and spent sixteen years as a Partner at McKinsey & Company, Inc.

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Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers Review

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Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers ReviewThis book is very different as a business book. Instead of being filled with dense, usually overly wordy pages, it is beautifully laid out, the wording is kept to a minimum, and there are lots of illustrations.
The book is focused on ways to think of the model for your business... with some nice guidelines for structuring the thought process... as well as a bunch of examinations of different types of businesses.
It has good discussions on thinking through what is critical for the business, where the cost structures are, where the benefits are, and how to organize and present those ideas.
It also has a number of cases studies of various companies that changed or invented new business models, such as Amazon's introduction of Web Services.
The book is fast to read, and there were several sections I bookmarked to put into use in my company, which to me is always a good sign for a book.
Where the book is lacking is that I would really have liked more case studies -- a bit more meat so to speak -- once a company came up with the new model, how did the artifacts of the book's discussions come into play with the execution? Did any of the techniques discussed help with the inevitable pitfalls associated? What are some case studies for when people tried the techniques discussed and failed miserably? Innovator's Dilemma, by comparison, does a much better look at both positive and negative case studies, which can provide a lot more learning.
I also would have liked more depth on the blue ocean discussion.
Altogether though, an interesting read and a good addition to my management book shelf.Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers Overview

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iPhone & iPad Web Design For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) Review

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iPhone & iPad Web Design For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) ReviewI don't know what the other reviewer was talking about. This book really doesn't concentrate on Dreamweaver; it actually uses a wide variety of tools to teach you how to design for the iPhone and iPad. I found it to actually be fun to read (and when is the last time you actually said that about a book that teaches you something techy?). Highly recommended - I'm already building my own iPad sites.iPhone & iPad Web Design For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) OverviewA full-color guide to designing cutting-edge web sites for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch!
Apple's touchscreen devices have created worldwide techno-lust, conjuring a record-breaking market out of thin air.
iPads, iPhones, and iPods are so in demand that they outsell every other device in their categories. If your website is not designed to take advantage of the extraordinary new capabilities of these popular devices, then you will miss out on an increasingly important part of your audience.
With all the focus on the App Store (thanks to the ubiquitous "There's an App for that…" ad campaign), you could be forgiven for overlooking the fact that the single most popular app on the iPhone and iPad is Safari. That's right. The humble web browser that comes installed on every iOS device, ready to surf at the flick of a finger.
This is where iPhone & iPad Web Design For Dummies comes in. Based on real-world experience, this guide (written in a language that real human beings can read) shows you how to use HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery to produce interactive websites that will delight your users and keep them coming back for more.
You'll discover how to plan the perfect mobile web experience, create interactivity and multimedia, test and optimize your creations, and publish and market your final design with iPhone & iPad Web Design For Dummies!


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