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- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Corporate portfolio strategy: Viguerie, Patrick et al., 2008, The Granularity of Growth, McKinsey & Company
- Note the authors claim the goal should be to re-allocate resources to any pockets of growth, not just profitable pockets. They assert that profitability inevitably follows volume. That is a controversial statement. Focusing on pockets of profitable growth (or at least pockets where there is a clear path to profitability) will help you avoid the pitfalls that airlines, for example have fallen into, where there’s a long history of investing in high-volume routes that nonetheless consistently degrade the overall profits of the company.
- Corporate portfolio strategy: Bradley, Chris, et al., 2018, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick, McKinsey & Company.
- Zenger, Todd, 2016, Beyond Competitive Advantage: How to Solve the Puzzle of Sustaining Growth While Creating Value, Harvard Business Review Press.
- The Disney case study mentioned above is in chapter one.
1/4 – What’s a High $ Pain Point that Keeps Someone Awake at Night?
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Sharp, Isadore, 2012, Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy
- General strategy
- Bradley, Chris, et al., 2013, Mastering the Building Blocks of Strategy, McKinsey Quarterly 2013 Issue #4. Available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/mastering-the-building-blocks-of-strategy
- Porter, Michael, 1985, Competitive Advantage, Free Press
- Porter, Michael, 1996 and re-published in 2011, “What is Strategy?” from HBR’s “On Strategy”
- Porter, Michael, 1998, Competitive Strategy, Free Press
- Magretta, Joan, 2011, Understanding Michael Porter, Harvard Business Review Press
- Special thanks to Jason Majane for his expertise.
2/4 – What’s Our Unique Approach to Unlock the Value Pool?
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Mauborgne, Renée and Kim, W. Chan, 2004, Blue Ocean Strategy
3/4 – Why Us? Why Can’t Two Kids in a Dorm Room Build This?
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-strategic-yardstick-you-cant-afford-to-ignore
- https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/how-tech-giants-deliver-outsized-returns-and-what-it-means-for-the-rest-of-us
4/4 – How Will We Engage and Delight Our Users?
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Lafley, A.G. and Martin, Roger L., 2013, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, Harvard Business Review Press. (The P&G references are from here).
Close Your Eyes and Imagine an Example of a Strategy. Got Nothing?
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Mauborgne, Renée and Kim, W. Chan, 2004, Blue Ocean Strategy
- Lafley, A.G. and Martin, Roger L., 2013, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, Harvard Business Review Press. (The Olay example comes from chapter one; the buyer versus user example from chapter six).
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- McGrath, Rita Gunther, 2013, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business, Harvard Business Review Press.
- The Milliken case study mentioned above is in chapter two.
- Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 2007, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random House.
Why Strategy and Analytics (Together) are the Future of AI
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
Lawrence of Arabia, the Original Agile Disruptor, Had Sore Feet
- Lawrence, T.E., 1938, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
Startups Should Do “Value Pool Sizing”, Not “Market Sizing”
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
Strategy and Agility: Lessons from Toyota, Honda, Yamaha, and Tesla
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Richards, Chet, 2004, Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business
Fill Your Founding Team With “MacGyvers”
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Duckworth, Angela, 2018, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Find People with No Teeth to Inform Your Product Design Process
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Portigal, Steve, 2013, Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights
- Lafley, A.G. and Martin, Roger L., 2013, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, Harvard Business Review Press. (The Bob McDonald quote is from a speech to the Global Business Leadership Council Year End Meeting, November 11, 2009.).
- Video: Rapid Prototyping & Product Management by Tom Chi at Mind the Product San Francisco https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=wINoHEXJ2-M
Some Strategy Mistakes I’ve Made
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Any of the first few articles on strategist.blog cover the steps I recommend for developing a strategy
Finding New Area of Growth: Lessons from Disney and DC Comics
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Any of the first few articles on strategist.blog cover the steps I recommend for developing a strategy
Does Your Product Only Need to Change the Behavior of a Few Users?
- Gladwell, Malcolm, 2012, What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
How to Develop the 2nd Product Your Startup Needs: A Sales Engine
- Moore, Geoffrey, 1991, Crossing the Chasm
- Ross, Aaron and Tyler, Marylou, 2012, Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
How to Avoid the 7 Stages of Grief When Naming Your Company
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
How to Create a Pitch Deck for Investors
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- The HotMail example is from Livingston, Jessica, 2008, Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days, Apress
How to Raise Funds for Your Startup
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Thiel, Peter, 2014, Zero to One: Notes on startups, or how to build the future, Currency
- North Carolina’s Small Business Technology Development Center (SBTDC)
Why Coca-Cola’s Mission Statement is the Perfect Template for Yours
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Bock, Laszlo, 2015, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
Anyone Who Claims They Have “The Perfect Sales Deck” is Missing the Point
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
How Do You Know If You Have Product-Market Fit?
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Wunker, Stephen et al., 2017, Jobs to Be Done: A roadmap for customer-centered innovation
- Gladwell, Malcolm, 2009, What the Dog Saw and other adventures, a collection of articles, Back Bay Books.
- Vohra, Rahul, 2019, How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit. https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/
- Special thanks to Vineet Sinha for his expertise
How “Putting the Kale in the Pancakes” Can Reconcile the Needs of Buyers and Users
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
How to Get Users to Use Your Product
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Cialdini, Robert, 1984. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)
- Service, Owain and Gallagher, Rory, 2017, Think Small: The Surprisingly Simple Ways to Reach Big Goals
- Lace, William W., 2009, Great Explorers: Captain James Cook, Chelsea House: An imprint of Infobase Publishing
- Gaddis, John Lewis, On Grand Strategy, 2018, Penguin Press, pg 309 in particular.
- Gladwell, Malcolm, 2009, What the Dog Saw and other adventures, a collection of articles, Back Bay Books.
- Kahneman, Daniel, 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow
- AppCue’s Onboarding Academy (a one-hour online course I took in June, 2018).
- McKinsey Quarterly, “The four building blocks of change”, April 2016 article. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-four-building-blocks–of-change
- Special thanks to Tom Rose of Testive, Shamir Kharkal of Simple Bank, and Rolla Couchman of DosedDaily for their expertise.
How to Get Users to Use Your Product on a Daily Basis
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Eyal, Nir, 2014, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
- Kahneman, Daniel, 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Take a Lesson from Google, Intel, and Others … Use OKRs Instead of Product Roadmaps
- Doerr, John, 2018, Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
- Cagan, Marty, 2018, INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, 2nd Edition
- Video: The Root Cause of Product Failure—Marty Cagan, at USI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVbVEdF75PE
- Video: Rapid Prototyping & Product Management by Tom Chi at Mind the Product San Francisco https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=wINoHEXJ2-M
- Lafley, A.G. and Martin, Roger L., 2013, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, Harvard Business Review Press.
Can You Scale Your Company Without Losing Your Identity?
- Rossman, John, 2016, The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company
How to Prove that Your Product is Creating Impact
- Gladwell, Malcolm, 2009, What the Dog Saw and other adventures, a collection of articles, Back Bay Books. The example is from the article, “Blowup”.
- http://tomtunguz.com/proxy-metrics/
Do Your Marketing, Sales, and Product Materials Tell the Same Continuous Story?
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
PayPal’s Strategy and How It Evolved Over Time
- 4 Steps to Develop a Strategy (the 4 articles that are the foundation for strategist.blog)
- Livingston, Jessica, 2008, Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days Apress
Lessons on Corporate Growth and Culture from the American Civil War
- Catton, Bruce, 1953. The Army of the Potomac: A Stillness at Appomattox. Doubleday & Company. Chapter 1.
There are 18 Sources of Competitive Advantage. Which Ones Do You Have? Are You Maximizing Your Use of Them?
- Thiel, Peter, 2014, Zero to One: Notes on startups, or how to build the future
- Blank, Steve and Dorf, Bob, 2012, The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company
- Fountain, Ben, 2007, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara
Revenue Growth and ROIC Are All That Matter
- Koller, Tim, et al., 2005, Valuation, 4th Edition, McKinsey & Company. Especially Exhibit 6.10 “ROIC by Industry Group” and 6.16 “Revenue Growth by Industry Group”
- Koller, Tim et al., 2011, Value, McKinsey & Company. Especially Chapter 10, “Return on Capital” and Chapter 11, “Growth”, including Exhibit 11.1 “Value of Different Types of Growth” and 11.4 “Revenue Growth Transition Probability”
- Bradley, Chris, et al., 2013, Mastering the Building Blocks of Strategy, McKinsey Quarterly 2013 Issue #4. Available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/mastering-the-building-blocks-of-strategy
- Bradley, Chris, et al., 2018, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick, McKinsey & Company. Especially Chapter 4, “What are the Odds?”
- Lafley, A.G. and Martin, Roger L., 2013, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, Harvard Business Review Press. (The TRS example comes from chapter six).
- Porter, Michael, 1985, Competitive Advantage, Free Press
- Porter, Michael, 1996 and re-published in 2011, “What is Strategy?” from HBR’s On Strategy
- Porter, Michael, 1998, Competitive Strategy, Free Press
- Magretta, Joan, 2011, Understanding Michael Porter, Harvard Business Review Press
4 Attributes of the Most Successful Companies, According to McKinsey
- Bradley, Chris, et al., 2018, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick, McKinsey & Company. o Especially Chapter 5, “How to find the real hockey stick” and Chapter 7, “Making the right (big) moves”
- Viguerie, Patrick et al., 2008, The Granularity of Growth, McKinsey & Company
- One note: the authors claim the goal should be to re-allocate resources to any pockets of growth, not just profitable pockets. They assert that profitability inevitably follows volume. That is a controversial statement. Focusing on pockets of profitable growth (or at least pockets where there is a clear path to profitability) will help you avoid the pitfalls that airlines, for example, have fallen into, where there’s a long history of investing in high-volume routes that nonetheless consistently degrade the overall profits of the company.
How the Patriots Won Superbowl 51
- (none)
An Executive’s Guide to Implementing AI and Machine Learning
- Video: Lecture 1 of 18 of Caltech’s Machine Learning Course – CS 156 by Professor Yaser Abu-Mostafa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbyG85GZ0PI
How We Accidentally Fired All of Our Top Performers
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231587/millennials-job-hopping-generation.aspx and the referenced report, “How Millennials Want to Work and Live”
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahlandrum/2017/11/10/millennials-arent-afraid-to-change-jobs-and-heres-why/#552fece19a50
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