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BOOKS ON
STRATEGIC THINKING:
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The Fifth Discipline / Fifth Discipline
Fieldbook
Peter Senge
SYSTEMS THINKING & LEARNING
ORGANIZATIONS
This classic introduces two
concepts that are essential in every business situation:
Systems Thinking -
understanding how the various entities in any situation interact
as a system.
Learning
Organization – typically groups of people are collectively dumber than their
individual members. The concept of the 'learning organization'
looks at how groups of smart people can be smart as a team.
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The Innovator's Dilemma
Clayton Christensen
THE STRATEGY OF DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Drawing on a century of technology
history (beginning with the telegraph and the telephone),
Christensen explains how and why seemingly irrelevant upstarts
dethrone the giants in a market.
This is essential reading for anyone
thinking about developing and marketing innovations.
Business ... has just two functions: Marketing and Innovation.
Marketing & Innovation make money. Everything else is a cost. |
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Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Peter Drucker
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The first book to "present
innovation and entrepreneurship as a systematic discipline."
Drucker examines the relationship between innovation
and entrepreneurial opportunities and reminds the reader that
few meaningful innovations are based on new technologies. The
list of the 'seven sources of innovative opportunities' is worth
the price of admission.
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Blue Ocean Strategy
W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
STRATEGY
Traditional industries tend to be 'red oceans'
in which competitors battle for market share in a
zero-sum game. Everybody thinks alike, and cut-throat competition turns the ocean red.
'Blue ocean' refers to the idea that a
business can create a new 'market space' by redefining product
and industry boundaries and focusing on innovations that create
value for customers ('value innovation'). These
oceans are blue because there is little or no direct competition.
Using examples such as Cirque du
Soleil, Ford's Model T and the New York Police Department, the
authors address how to identify blue oceans, and how to overcome
the organizational hurdles that can derail a promising blue
ocean strategy.
"Most people in an
industry are blind in the same way. They're all paying
attention to the same things, and not paying attention to
the same things"
- Gary Hamel
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Mavericks At Work
William Taylor & Polly LaBarre
INNOVATIVE BUSINESS
MODELS
In a similar vein to Blue Ocean
Strategy, Mavericks shows how "maverick" leaders are using
unconventional thinking to create businesses that redefine their
industries and become innovation machines. The authors
illustrate how the logic of competition has evolved from products
and business models, into a competition between value systems.
"If you want
to renew and re-energize an industry, don't hire people from
that industry. You've got to un-train them and then
re-train them. I'd rather hire a jazz musician...they can
learn about banking. It's much harder for bankers to unlearn
their bad habits. They're trapped in the past. Remember,
resurrection has only worked once in history."
- Arkadi Kuhlman, CEO, ING Direct Bank
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BOOKS ON MARKETING:
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Copy |
Marketing As Strategy: Understanding the
CEO's Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation
Nirmalya Kumar
HOW Marketing
PROVIDES LeaderSHIP in THE FIRM
Kumar looks at the critical
interaction between the marketing function and the firm's
overall strategy and illustrates how the marketing function must take a
leadership role in driving and transforming the company.
"A true
market-orientation does not mean becoming marketing-driven;
it means that the entire company obsesses over creating
value for the customer, and views itself as a bundle of
processes that profitably define, create, communicate, and
deliver value to its target customers."
- Nirmalya
Kumar
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Counter-Intuitive Marketing
Kevin Clancy & Peter Krieg
Market Strategy &
Research
Written by two experts in market
research, Counter-intuitive Marketing points out the
dangers of traditional market research and makes clear
recommendations on how to obtain meaningful information about
your market and customers.
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Crossing the Chasm
Geoffrey Moore
Moore's Silicon Valley classic combines
the concepts of Everett Roger's 'Diffusion of Innovation' theory
(e.g. "early adopters") with marketing guru Regis McKenna's
essential ideas about high-tech marketing.
Moore describes a strategy for
marketing products when different segments of customers buy at different times and for vastly
different reasons.
These are essential ideas whenever
you're introducing an innovative product or idea to any group of
individuals.
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Marketing High Technology: An Insider's
View
William Davidow PhD
Twenty-one years old, and this book is still
incredibly relevant to anyone developing and marketing high-tech
products.
The author, a PhD engineer, was a general
manager at Intel when he was "volunteered" by Andy Grove to lead
a marketing task force to restore Intel's preeminence in the
microprocessor market (they succeeded).
Beginning with the statement that "Marketing
is civilized warfare," Davidow tells you what you need to do
to successfully develop and sell high-tech products.
"Great devices are
invented in the lab.
Great products are invented in the marketing dept."
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S.P.I.N. Selling Fieldbook
Neil Rackham
Product Marketing
and Sales
S.P.I.N. stands for Situation,
Problem,
Implications and Needs/Payoff.
Based on the lessons from observing
35,000 sales calls, SPIN is a powerful process for selling
big-ticket products in situations that represent high 'career
risk' for the decision makers.
The SPIN process guides your
customer through a comprehensive survey of the problems in their
current situation, the implications (costs) of these problems,
and the payoff from a solution to these problems.
When SPIN selling is done correctly,
your customer tells you how much your solution is worth
to them.
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