Entries Tagged 'Book Review' ↓

Jeff defines (link) crowdsourcing as the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

Interesting.

I thought about whether I would try to do a review on it for this blog and I was not sure if I found it relevant to the scope of the blog. If product management is involved in crowdsourcing, then it is mostly definitely a tactic in helping to achieve a strategy and if managed properly, with the proper expectations I would support a crowdsourcing initiative for you as a roadmap supporting activity. Not that you need my support or approval.

That being said, as product managers (or all associated types) start hearing the word “crowdsourcing” being used (or consider using it themselves), I highly recommend reading the book so that you can understand really what it means. I suspect most people think of it as a way to outsource a role or worse that crowdsourcing just magically manages itself.

I know what you are thinking. Jeff’s definition says, “taking a job … and outsourcing”, but I don’t read this as a job job I read this more as a outsourcing tasks.

I think crowdsourcing can be a successful tactic and as more people execute successful crowdsourcing projects you will hear more about it. My advice is be prepared.

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A world wide rave: What the heck is that?

A World Wide Rave is when people around the world are talking about you, your company, and your products. Whether you’re located in San Francisco, Dubai, or Reykjavík, it’s when global communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It’s when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. And it’s when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there.

This book challenges you, with highly effective examples, to think about the ways you engage your buyers. By using blogs, e-books, videos, Twitter, Facebook, podcasts and any other online medium you are able to connect with your buyers in ways that weren’t possible before, but more importantly using the tools that they are using today. The evidence shows that if you understand their problems, tell them stories, and enable them to share those stories people will choose to do business with you.

There are six rules to creating a ‘world wide rave’ and they are:

1. Nobody cares about your products (except you)
2. No coercion required
3. Lose Control
4. Put Down Roots
5. Create Triggers to Encourage People to Share
6. Point the World to your Virtual Doorstep

I highly recommend you read the book to learn more about these six rules, but the gist of them is to stop talking about you, be open, freely share, have an online profile, be prepared to fail and have an online home.

One final point, Scott makes a great case that creating a ‘world wide rave’ will not happen overnight. You have to submerse yourself in understanding your buyer persona, their problems and start sharing. As product managers we already know that, but it is always nice to read additional reasons to reinforce that.

Now the challenge is adding at least two new activities, either starting a blog (targeted towards your buyers) or writing an e-book to your roadmap.

About the Author
David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and the author of five books including World Wide Rave, The New Rules of Marketing & PR and Tuned In (with Craig Stull and Phil Myers). Check out his blog Web Ink Now and follow him on Twitter @dmscott.

Image source: worldwiderave.com

First, the red and blue ocean concept is very simple. Red oceans are well known and typically crowded with competitors where as blue oceans represent a potentially new market with a real opportunity and no competitors (we know there are always competitors).

The book was organized into two parts, first discovering a blue ocean and the second formulating a blue ocean strategy. In the simplest summary, maybe too simple, discovering a blue ocean seems to consist of finding new opportunities within your market that extend your offering (i.e. product, feature, solution, etc.) beyond where solutions exist today. The take-away from this is that you need to be open to (and probably exclusively focused on) the possibility that the market needs do not exist today and some market sensing will need to be executed. Basically, I like to spell ‘blue ocean’ like this I-N-N-O-V-A-T-I-O-N . That being said, the first section offered some interesting tools and suggestion for analyzing your market and contrasting your offering with your competitors to identify where you are successful and potentially competing to your own red ocean death. See footnote [1] for more information on those tools. The second part of this book runs through some basic strategy concepts for formulating the strategy.

One term I really liked from the book was ‘value innovation’. They define ‘value innovation’ as a process that focuses on value creation. Not rocket science but that extra word, value, really helps keep you focused on your innovation, now value innovation, activities.

Overall, this was a decent read. I picked up some interesting new terms and some best-practices on uncovering potential opportunities. I also learned bits and pieces about sequencing strategy (utility, price [2], cost and adoption), overcoming organizational hurdles (leadership) and building execution (fair process[3]) into your strategy.

[1] If you are interested in another product management related review – including working examples of the tools, please read Personas Make Blue Ocean Strategy Proactive on the Tyner Blain blog.

[2] Interesting discussion in the book about determining target price and then using that to shape the cost. Not vice-versa.

[3] Fair process builds execution into strategy by creating people’s buy-in up front.

Image source: Amazon.com, Inc.

Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What’s Obvious But Not Easy is a book written by David H. Maister. David is acknowledged as an authority on the management of professional service firms.

The premise behind this book is rooted in the theory that most strategies fail because of the structure and commitment behind them. He summarizes that passion, people and principles are the cornerstone of any strategy. Combined they will offer a network of people with natural desire to achieve and are guided by a defined and trusted ideology. When asked whether you can succeed without each component, he offered a quote from his wife: “the most important ingredient in any recipe in the one you forgot to put in!”

There were a number of takeaways from the book that I plan to incorporate into my thinking. Here are a few:

“… the only way you can achieve any strategic distinction is to do that (turn away business). Strategy is deciding whose business you are going to turn away.”

“Strategy is a set of rules or guidelines that tell you how to go about making decisions”

“The firm exists to help its people succeed, not the other way round.”

Mr. Maister admits in the introduction that this book is designed more as a reference and recommends you “dip into” as sections are of interest.

The first five chapters cover strategy, the next section is applying strategy to excellence in client relationships, then a section on management and lastly he pulls it together with some real life examples and summary thoughts on what it takes to stay true to your strategies.

One chapter that I found particular interesting was the “The Chief Executive’s Speech” where David re-printed a speech he wrote for a CEO that was about to begin his role for a large professional firm. You can listen to the podcast here.

Overall, this was an interesting read and I recommend it to others.

Image source: DavidMaister.com

I enjoyed reading this book very much. This book is a collection of articles that Rich has been writing over the past decade as part of his Product Bytes newsletter. Fortunately the context of each article is still relevant. Here is quick summary of a couple of my favorite chapters…

The Accidental Agilist: This is a great 5-minute overview of what Agile Software Development means to product management. It highlights the positives to Product Management including frequent customer feedback, simpler requirements and better estimates.

The Roadmap Less Travelled: Rich discusses creating three flavors of your roadmap for press and analysts, customers or prospects and development. Each will vary in specifics and details.

The Strategic Secret Shopper: In this article, Rich discusses some competitive intelligence activities for gathering information on your competitors.

Overall this book weaves its way through a variety of topics that are relevant to product managers. It is written in a language that is easy to understand and doesn’t weigh you down with specific details allowing you to take the gist of the story and apply it to your own situation.

Tying this back to strategy, there are bits and pieces scattered that are relevant such as the article on roadmaps, pricing and competitive strategy.

I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on the title of the book. Although I appreciate the subtle dance that is product management, product management is a science that is rooted in fact-based decisions for achieving very business-like objectives. There I feel better.

Despite the title, I recommend this book to all product managers as both an educational read and future reference guide.

You can order a copy from here… Write That Down – Amazon Book Store

Image source: Amazon