RAFFIAPALM

Resources for product teams from industry experts.

business

  • …the process of strategy then reiterates through these steps over and over again, constantly evolving. In other words, strategy is not a discrete analytical event — something decided, say, in a meeting of top managers based on the best numbers and analysis available at the time. Rather, it is a continuous, diverse, and unruly process. Managing it is very hard — the deliberate strategy and the new emerging opportunities fight for resources.

    On the one hand, if you have a strategy that really is working, you need to deliberately focus to keep everyone working together in the right direction. At the same time, however, that focus can easily cause you to dismiss as a distraction what could actually turn out to be the next big thing. It may be challenging and unruly, but this is the process by which almost all companies have developed a winning strategy.

    — How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, et al.

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • The real secret of Silicon Valley is that it’s really all about the people. Sure, there are plenty of stories in the press about the industry’s young geniuses, but surprisingly few about its management practices. What the mainstream press misses is that Silicon Valley’s success comes from the way its companies build alliances with their employees. Here, talent really is the most valuable resource, and employees are treated accordingly.

    The most successful Silicon Valley businesses succeed because they use the alliance to recruit, manage, and retain an incredibly talented team of entrepreneurial employees.

    — The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, et al.

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • The only defense a person has in our overcommunicated society is an oversimplified mind. Not unless they repeal the law of nature that gives us only 24 hours in a day will they find a way to stuff more into the mind. The average mind is already a dripping sponge that can only soak up more information at the expense of what’s already there. Yet we continue to pour more information into that supersaturated sponge and are disappointed when our messages fail to get through.

    Advertising, of course, is only the tip of the communication iceberg. We communicate with each other in a wide variety of bewildering ways. And in a geometrically increasing volume. The medium may not be the message, but it does seriously affect the message. Instead of a transmission system, the medium acts like a filter. Only a tiny fraction of the original material ends up in the mind of the receiver.

    — Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries, Jack Trout

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • If there is money to be made, new firms will enter the market, increase supply, drive prices down, and thereby eliminate the profits that attracted them in the first place. If too many firms enter the market, they’ll suffer losses, some will fold, and prices will rise back to sustainable levels. Under perfect competition, in the long run, no company makes an economic profit.

    — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here, companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities, and cutthroat competition turns the red ocean bloody.

    Blue oceans, in contrast, are defined by untapped market space, demand creation, and the opportunity for highly profitable growth. Although some blue oceans are created well beyond existing industry boundaries, most are created from within red oceans by expanding existing industry boundaries. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set.

    — Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne, et al.

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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