If you’re an emerging business and want a playbook about how to win against your better financed, more well equipped mature competitors, this is definitely worth a read. If you’re a big business, reading this book and understanding the concepts may save you from extinction one day. Harvard University professor Clay Christensen’s look at how innovative upstarts have taken down giants is a must read.
Why Do We Love This Book
We love 80/20 at Peak. Getting focused on acquiring and growing bigger customers with tight product lines is part of our DNA. However, any philosophy, when overapplied can come back to hurt you. Think of this book as the anti-80/20 playbook. Great examples of how large companies focusing on the customers that make them the most money and focusing on giving them more of what they ask for can hurt you. Those customers are generally focused on their mature product lines today.
This book is full of examples of how ignoring product lines and technologies that seem inferior to the leading technology of the day can hit you later like a roundhouse kick to the blindside. Right now, small companies are gaining a foothold focusing on technologies that big companies think isn’t worth their time. You can be the company gaining a foothold or the company getting roundhouse kicked – which are you going to be?
Any Criticisms?
Well, it’s written by a Harvard University professor. Considering that, the stories are great, and it’s fairly readable, but to say this is written in plain “magazine level” English would be a stretch.
