Further Resources and Acknowledgements

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What is Strategy?

• 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).

 

Is Strategy Dead?

• 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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