May you live in interesting times.
- the Chinese curse
If we go through the internet trends published by Mary Meeker in May 2013, it is clear that we already live in interesting times! One may refer to the following slides.
- the Chinese curse
If we go through the internet trends published by Mary Meeker in May 2013, it is clear that we already live in interesting times! One may refer to the following slides.
The above slide talks about how earlier technology trends lasted ten years. The technology trends are lasting for shorter duration. Interestingly, in the previous slide ie. slide 48, she refers to an 'Unusual Pattern' of strong emergence of the third 'Computing Cycle' while 'Smartphones' & 'Tablets' computing cycles are at early stage.
The above slide presents more interesting, rather bewildering, trend. From 1960 till 2010, ie. in the last 50 years, we had 1 billion devices to connect users. But within the next few years, by 2020, we will be having 10 billion devices connecting users, globally. With every technology cycle, the users per devices is showing the growth of 10X! In addition, the technology cycles are shortening year by year!
While most of the users, the product and the service providers are familiarizing and exploiting the devices, wearable/everywhere computing devices are already a reality and are promising to grow strongly! If these trends are not bewilderingly interesting, what else can be more interesting!
Though the such bewilderingly 'interesting times' act like curse for most of the managers and leaders; for the ones who have the capability to the spirit of adventure and resources to support these times work out to be great blessings! Successive technology and business cycles have resulted in the emergence of many global business leaders. Whereas the emergence of steel, petroleum, automobiles industries helped Andrew Carnegie, John Rockfeller and Henry Ford to build great businesses. Similarly, emergence of many other industries, businesses and technologies helped many other leaders to grow. In a way, those interesting times worked as blessings for those leaders. These leaders exhibited great tenacity, perseverance, innovation, business leadership qualities to build long lasting global empires. management and leadership literature has tried to capture the essence of such business ventures and offered many lessons.
The technological cycles in the slide above have resulted in business leaders in each of those cycles. Whereas, Mainframe era led to IBM, Mini Computers to Digital, Personal Computing to Intel, Apple and Microsoft, Desktop Internet Computing to Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Apple,.. Mobile Internet Computing and Social Networking waves are being leveraged Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, Pinterest...., as we go through these excitingly interesting times many of them will emerge as enduring global corporations, while some may end up vanishing at the great roller coaster ride we have been going through!
The answers to leverage such interesting times has been sought by many business leadership experts. The efforts have been put through many dimensions. Though many times there are blurring lines between Strategy, Execution and Operations, for simplicity and clarity one may distinguish under these disciplines. I personally feel that Clayton Christensen's books, Innovator's Dilemma, Innovator's Solution, Innovator's DNA and Seeing What's Next address strategic aspect of business leadership. Similarly, Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, Dealing with Darwin and Escape Velocity address execution aspects of disruptive breakthrough technology and business cycles. Jim Collins' Good to Great and Great by Choice also offer guidelines for execution. The literature on Toyota's Lean Management Principles and agile management gives us insights into operational aspects of businesses in these interesting times.
In brief, Clayton Christensen offers a framework of Resources, Processes, Values and the resultant Culture (RPVC, respectively) to pursue innovative ventures. He also provides the concept of 'Job to be Done' of any offering whether product, service or mix of both for the customers/clients. The concept provides a new perspective to formulate the offerings, which liberates the innovator from the constraints of conventional thinking about products and/or services. This is also helpful in dicing and slicing the target markets. The perspective is helpful even at the time of design, execution and operation of RPVC framework. In Innovator's Dilemma, he touched upon the RPVC framework briefly but the thrust was on highlighting the dilemma faced by the business leaders and managers. The Innovator's dilemma is explained in the following slide:
For most of the new organizations, the journey begins at satisfying the needs of low end performance demand by the low end markets. Such new organizations tend to chase high margin market which seeks high end performance. Generally, the organizations ride the new technology to hit the high end market at T2 in the figure. From there the organization's market facing culture gets shaped and entrenched based on the demands of the market. Very few organizations could build the RPVC framework so as to straddle both the market and the new technology; and that was the dilemma faced by the organizations. In the PC era, only Microsoft and Intel could shape the high demanding market to seek disruptive technology. The gist of Andy Grove's leveraging Strategic Inflection Points was to know the emergent technology trends following Moore's Law. Microsoft complemented Intel in developing applications seeking high performance offered by Intel. The duopoly existed as far as both were straddling both the curves to lead the ecosystem. In my view, after the emergence of internet, we entered another phase of network effect. Compared to the technology curve based on Moore's Law, the new curve is much steeper. Since it was not contemplated and tackled by both Intel and Microsoft, both had to cede way for players like Cisco, Qualcomm, Google and Facebook respectively for the emergence of internet, mobile, search monetization and social network, so far! One may refer to the curve in the logarithmic graph in the second slide (slide 50 of internet trends published by Mary Meeker in May 2013) above. The curve is almost getting asymptotic! There lies the huge opportunity for the application developers to leverage the technology. These application developers have the additional challenge of straddling on both the market curves ('High End Demand and Low End Demand market curves) and the steepening technology curves at shorter intervals. Till now, Google's Lab framework is working wonders for them. The framework, in my view, is a rehash of 3M's long standing framework to promote innovation. Many, including Google have their venture capital arms too, additionally CISCO's flawless acquisitions, integrations and/or spinoffs are some more effective strategies to thrive on these eXplosively eXponential (XX) opportunities!
Innovator's Solution is almost an exhaustive work on the RPVC model. In fact, he goes on to prove, how a simple mechanism of prioritizing fast growing and high margin products to commit manufacturing resources in Intel in 80's defined RPVC framework within the organization. For implementing RPVC framework afresh in organizations he helpfully suggests to follow Intel model. Regarding Resources, he also recommends to identify talent by applying the principles mentioned in High Flyers by Morgan W McCall. (I am yet to read the book.) But Christensen suggestion that the experience of the business managers and leaders to be seen as a learning in the jobs done previously, provides the new way of looking at the experience profile. Processes are set considering the values of the organizations. In the example above of Intel, the Process of thrust on high growth in high profit evolved from the desire (Value) of Intel leadership team to grow and succeed in high growth and high margin products. Though, in a well cited event of the leaders firing themselves from Intel to return to realign the process is covered dramatically by Andy Grove's Only the Paranoid Survive. Andy Grove mentions that while Intel was troubled by Japanese RAM manufacturers, the leaders took a hard stance. They told themselves, if new management would have been installed by firing the existing management, how would they fix. They did the dramatic enactment of such firing and 'rejoined' to implement the process of allocation of prioritization on the basis of high value and high growth. Whereas values dictate processes and resources, they define the Culture of the organization.The innovations need to be seen through the framework of RPVC. If the innovation is leveraged to sustain the ongoing RPVC framework then it can be treated as sustaining innovation. If the innovation leads to overhauling of the present RPVC framework, then that is breakthrough innovation. In a way, for any innovation within a given industry also may work out to be either sustaining or breakthrough innovation based on the RPVC framework of a given organization. Clayton Christensen does a great job in providing the right set of tools and frameworks at strategic level. He guides the readers to refer to the other authors like Geoffrey Moore to seek answers at execution level, though not explicitly.
Geoffrey Moore has been providing different frameworks for high tech organization since decades. He doesn't hesitate to explore ideas in different fields to give the readers the most appropriate analogues. Compared to the other business management authors, his thrust is on execution aspects. His works have influenced many business leaders to implement his ideas while executing. I have listened to Intuit's CEO specifically referring to Geofffrey Moore's Horizon 1, 2 and 3 approach for innovations. The greatest contribution from Geoffrey Moore has been the Technology Adoption Cycle (TAC) of markets. Not only Geoffrey Moore offers the contours in market terrains through out TAC; he offers possible strategies and execution frameworks to be adopted by the market players. He has offered wise advice through series of books borrowing spectacular analogues from various fields.
Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm provided specific guidelines for innovators how to avoid falling into the bottomless chasm between the early adopters (the visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists). His Inside the Tornado offered sage advice for the breakthrough innovators the tools to navigate through the tornado after leveraging domino effect in bowling alley. In The Gorilla Game, he also provides the ways and means to grow as gorilla to feed on the torrents of bananas and thrive on the tornado ... and keep away the swarms of monkeys! Living on the Fault Line and Dealing with Darwin provide the specific strategies and execution tactics to be adopted to navigate through main street and total assimilation stages of the TAC! Going forward, Geoffrey Moore provides astute framework in his latest Escape Velocity!
Jim Collins' Good to Great offers the habits to be inculcated to ensure better execution to take the organization to the next level. His Great by Choice stresses on discipline to achieve global leadership and stay ahead of the industry in sustained manner for decades. The book offers succinct mantra to be 10X performers: Be disciplined, productively paranoid and empirically creative! I am glad to note the stress on execution and discipline in business literature. I particularly liked the recent article, Merissa Mayer's Unauthorized Biography in Business Insider. Whereas, Nicholas Carlson provides trivia to make the readers glue to the article, he provides in depth coverage on Merissa Mayer's discipline and productive paranoia leading to social brusqueness but still delivering great results for Yahoo!
As far as operations go, Jeffrey Liker has done a great job through his prolific writing on Toyota Way series. Though the books have rich literature focusing on the operations of manufacturing organization. The principles are universal in nature. Eric Ries has been instrumental in applying lean management principles in startups through his book, The Lean Startup. I particularly like these following slides from Jeffrey Liker's slideshare, which capture the gist for running the operations in alignment with strategy and execution.
The thrust continuous improvement and learning in Toyota Way, is the foundation of defining the operations. The People and Partners, the Processes and the Philosophy here resonate well with Clayton Christensen's RPVC framework.
The above slide though refers to Toyota particularly, has universal appeal. Especially, the slide is applicable for the organizations who want to thrive on the curse (I am tempted to say the boon!) of 'Interesting Times'. As an afterthought, I should admit that I am more influenced by Angela Duckworth's literature on Grit, especially a recent article, Failure Makes You a Winner. Here, Angel Duckworth not only equates our journeys to Hero's Journey analysis by Joseph Campbell, she exhorts us to take up the journey to reach the pinnacle of success. This equally applies to the organizations we build! Wishing the readers a great journey of building and leading exceptionally great organizations in these interesting times!
Epilogue:
I am pleased to note that Orit Gadiesh, Chairperson of Bain and Co. along with Sri Rajan MD of India operations has written an article which appeared in The Economic Times on 3rd Sep. 2013 titled, Strategy in an Era of Continuous Uncertainty. The article expresses similar opinions as mentioned by me and offers the mantra, "a new strategic “A” game: one that’s alert, agile and able to move with alacrity."!
I could find a recent comprehensive article on Merissa Mayer very helpful.
Though the such bewilderingly 'interesting times' act like curse for most of the managers and leaders; for the ones who have the capability to the spirit of adventure and resources to support these times work out to be great blessings! Successive technology and business cycles have resulted in the emergence of many global business leaders. Whereas the emergence of steel, petroleum, automobiles industries helped Andrew Carnegie, John Rockfeller and Henry Ford to build great businesses. Similarly, emergence of many other industries, businesses and technologies helped many other leaders to grow. In a way, those interesting times worked as blessings for those leaders. These leaders exhibited great tenacity, perseverance, innovation, business leadership qualities to build long lasting global empires. management and leadership literature has tried to capture the essence of such business ventures and offered many lessons.
The technological cycles in the slide above have resulted in business leaders in each of those cycles. Whereas, Mainframe era led to IBM, Mini Computers to Digital, Personal Computing to Intel, Apple and Microsoft, Desktop Internet Computing to Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Apple,.. Mobile Internet Computing and Social Networking waves are being leveraged Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, Pinterest...., as we go through these excitingly interesting times many of them will emerge as enduring global corporations, while some may end up vanishing at the great roller coaster ride we have been going through!
The answers to leverage such interesting times has been sought by many business leadership experts. The efforts have been put through many dimensions. Though many times there are blurring lines between Strategy, Execution and Operations, for simplicity and clarity one may distinguish under these disciplines. I personally feel that Clayton Christensen's books, Innovator's Dilemma, Innovator's Solution, Innovator's DNA and Seeing What's Next address strategic aspect of business leadership. Similarly, Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, Dealing with Darwin and Escape Velocity address execution aspects of disruptive breakthrough technology and business cycles. Jim Collins' Good to Great and Great by Choice also offer guidelines for execution. The literature on Toyota's Lean Management Principles and agile management gives us insights into operational aspects of businesses in these interesting times.
In brief, Clayton Christensen offers a framework of Resources, Processes, Values and the resultant Culture (RPVC, respectively) to pursue innovative ventures. He also provides the concept of 'Job to be Done' of any offering whether product, service or mix of both for the customers/clients. The concept provides a new perspective to formulate the offerings, which liberates the innovator from the constraints of conventional thinking about products and/or services. This is also helpful in dicing and slicing the target markets. The perspective is helpful even at the time of design, execution and operation of RPVC framework. In Innovator's Dilemma, he touched upon the RPVC framework briefly but the thrust was on highlighting the dilemma faced by the business leaders and managers. The Innovator's dilemma is explained in the following slide:
Innovator's Solution is almost an exhaustive work on the RPVC model. In fact, he goes on to prove, how a simple mechanism of prioritizing fast growing and high margin products to commit manufacturing resources in Intel in 80's defined RPVC framework within the organization. For implementing RPVC framework afresh in organizations he helpfully suggests to follow Intel model. Regarding Resources, he also recommends to identify talent by applying the principles mentioned in High Flyers by Morgan W McCall. (I am yet to read the book.) But Christensen suggestion that the experience of the business managers and leaders to be seen as a learning in the jobs done previously, provides the new way of looking at the experience profile. Processes are set considering the values of the organizations. In the example above of Intel, the Process of thrust on high growth in high profit evolved from the desire (Value) of Intel leadership team to grow and succeed in high growth and high margin products. Though, in a well cited event of the leaders firing themselves from Intel to return to realign the process is covered dramatically by Andy Grove's Only the Paranoid Survive. Andy Grove mentions that while Intel was troubled by Japanese RAM manufacturers, the leaders took a hard stance. They told themselves, if new management would have been installed by firing the existing management, how would they fix. They did the dramatic enactment of such firing and 'rejoined' to implement the process of allocation of prioritization on the basis of high value and high growth. Whereas values dictate processes and resources, they define the Culture of the organization.The innovations need to be seen through the framework of RPVC. If the innovation is leveraged to sustain the ongoing RPVC framework then it can be treated as sustaining innovation. If the innovation leads to overhauling of the present RPVC framework, then that is breakthrough innovation. In a way, for any innovation within a given industry also may work out to be either sustaining or breakthrough innovation based on the RPVC framework of a given organization. Clayton Christensen does a great job in providing the right set of tools and frameworks at strategic level. He guides the readers to refer to the other authors like Geoffrey Moore to seek answers at execution level, though not explicitly.
Geoffrey Moore has been providing different frameworks for high tech organization since decades. He doesn't hesitate to explore ideas in different fields to give the readers the most appropriate analogues. Compared to the other business management authors, his thrust is on execution aspects. His works have influenced many business leaders to implement his ideas while executing. I have listened to Intuit's CEO specifically referring to Geofffrey Moore's Horizon 1, 2 and 3 approach for innovations. The greatest contribution from Geoffrey Moore has been the Technology Adoption Cycle (TAC) of markets. Not only Geoffrey Moore offers the contours in market terrains through out TAC; he offers possible strategies and execution frameworks to be adopted by the market players. He has offered wise advice through series of books borrowing spectacular analogues from various fields.
Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm provided specific guidelines for innovators how to avoid falling into the bottomless chasm between the early adopters (the visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists). His Inside the Tornado offered sage advice for the breakthrough innovators the tools to navigate through the tornado after leveraging domino effect in bowling alley. In The Gorilla Game, he also provides the ways and means to grow as gorilla to feed on the torrents of bananas and thrive on the tornado ... and keep away the swarms of monkeys! Living on the Fault Line and Dealing with Darwin provide the specific strategies and execution tactics to be adopted to navigate through main street and total assimilation stages of the TAC! Going forward, Geoffrey Moore provides astute framework in his latest Escape Velocity!
Jim Collins' Good to Great offers the habits to be inculcated to ensure better execution to take the organization to the next level. His Great by Choice stresses on discipline to achieve global leadership and stay ahead of the industry in sustained manner for decades. The book offers succinct mantra to be 10X performers: Be disciplined, productively paranoid and empirically creative! I am glad to note the stress on execution and discipline in business literature. I particularly liked the recent article, Merissa Mayer's Unauthorized Biography in Business Insider. Whereas, Nicholas Carlson provides trivia to make the readers glue to the article, he provides in depth coverage on Merissa Mayer's discipline and productive paranoia leading to social brusqueness but still delivering great results for Yahoo!
As far as operations go, Jeffrey Liker has done a great job through his prolific writing on Toyota Way series. Though the books have rich literature focusing on the operations of manufacturing organization. The principles are universal in nature. Eric Ries has been instrumental in applying lean management principles in startups through his book, The Lean Startup. I particularly like these following slides from Jeffrey Liker's slideshare, which capture the gist for running the operations in alignment with strategy and execution.
The thrust continuous improvement and learning in Toyota Way, is the foundation of defining the operations. The People and Partners, the Processes and the Philosophy here resonate well with Clayton Christensen's RPVC framework.
The above slide though refers to Toyota particularly, has universal appeal. Especially, the slide is applicable for the organizations who want to thrive on the curse (I am tempted to say the boon!) of 'Interesting Times'. As an afterthought, I should admit that I am more influenced by Angela Duckworth's literature on Grit, especially a recent article, Failure Makes You a Winner. Here, Angel Duckworth not only equates our journeys to Hero's Journey analysis by Joseph Campbell, she exhorts us to take up the journey to reach the pinnacle of success. This equally applies to the organizations we build! Wishing the readers a great journey of building and leading exceptionally great organizations in these interesting times!
Epilogue:
I am pleased to note that Orit Gadiesh, Chairperson of Bain and Co. along with Sri Rajan MD of India operations has written an article which appeared in The Economic Times on 3rd Sep. 2013 titled, Strategy in an Era of Continuous Uncertainty. The article expresses similar opinions as mentioned by me and offers the mantra, "a new strategic “A” game: one that’s alert, agile and able to move with alacrity."!
I could find a recent comprehensive article on Merissa Mayer very helpful.
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