Book Review: Wikinomics

Unfair as it is, to review a book like this and its predictions a few years after it is written, I do believe that the exercise does yield useful insights. Wikinomics by Don Tapscott, et al. is a well written and ambitious endeavor  that attempts to cover a lot of ground in recent trends.

They push the envelope in promoting a collaborative economics or Wikinomics. Wikinomics   goes beyond Web 2.0 and Open Source to paint a picture of an Utopia created by cooperation and trust among large corporations, governments and individuals.

The authors propose four principles for Wikinomics, openess, peering, sharing and global action. This new economy, they claim is born, from a perfect storm caused by the rise of Web 2.0, the coming of age of the Net generation and the breaking down of corporate borders on a large scale.

Peer production that evolved from software development, more precisely from Linux and Apache development and then in the making and maintaining of Wikipdia has now been embraced by global heavyweights like IBM. While the creators of Linux and Apache,  Torvald and Behlendorf did not directly benefit from their creations, IBM and all the numerous companies that embraced the Apache server stood to reap rewards, claim the authors.

Behlendorf, having made a name with Apache, went on to make CollabNet, a succesful company. Reading this part, I personally felt that the person or entity who comes up with an idea or product, in the Wikinomic environment must only look for a branding opportunity and cannot expect huge monetary rewards for their creation.

Wikinomics, the authors claim, creates a marketplace for finding solutions to needs and for finding needs for existing solutions. This thought is in fact prophetic. The XBMC media center was a solution for streaming media to the XBox (I wrote a detail article on this a few days ago.). XBMC and its new popular offspring, Boxee, with their numerous add-ons, have begun the process of proliferation of TV with the Internet.

Wikinomics will create prosumers, claim the authors. BMW and Lego Mindstorms are touted as examples of this trend. User innovation is one of the big promises of Web 2.0 and peering. While there has been some evidence of companies prospering from user innovation, I cannot believe that it is an approach that all corporations must consider.

The authors also propose a modern day Alexandria where one has access to all knowledge relevant to her or her chosen field. We are not there yet. (Web 3.0 will make this happen, with all the hype about contextual information that one may access, say the futurists today.)

The book proposes the rise of platforms as another Wikinomic side effect. Platforms according to Wikinomics, include Mashups and Open Apis.Interestingly the authors claim that Amazon is spearheading this trend with its search. This was not to be. Amazon's A9, Amazon's customized search,  today is History. There is no existing platform today, that can yet be touted as a roaring success.

Another effect of Wikinomics is global collaboration in manufacturing. Boeing and BMW are  examples of this type global plant floor, where suppliers, customers and all other stakeholders, play a significant role in the design of products. As the authors caution, the balancing act of guarding one's IP with the spirit of openness is a risky proposition that must be approached with caution.

The authors also speak of openness and sharing of information and ideas within the walls of a corporation.  Best Buy is one success story of this kind of 'Wiki Workplace' . The authors describe how, then CEO Brad Anderson, fostered innovation right from the bottom, by creating an intra-corporate social network where employees, irrespective of rank within the company can share ideas.

Interestingly, the latest Business week has an article singing the praises of Best Buy. The reasons for the company's success according to Business week are CEO Brian Dunn's efforts in fostering Best Buy teams that work with manufacturers like HP and Toshiba in  product   development and design, creating a 'digital playground' where customers can test out products and in experimenting in the selling of new products like electric vehicles and newer electronic products.

Best Buy attributes a lot of its success to its use of social media. Indeed, this is another Wikinomics prophecy that has turned out to be true. All in all, Wikinomics has proved to stand the test of time(about two years) in many of its predictions. This book is still a good addition to your bookshelf

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Book Review: Web 2.0 : A Strategy Guide

I guess it would be unfair ton critique a book on Web2.0 written in early 2007. However, it is an interesting exercise on looking at some predictions, some assumptions and some ideas just to figure out where they were right and where they failed.

In all fairness to this book by Amy Shuen, it tries hard to be useful. It has a lot of examples, attempts to analyze Web 2.0 business strategies and even tries to help the reader put together a business plan.

Unfortunately the final product looks more like a huge term paper or thesis from my last Master Program at MIT. It features numerous case studies and tries to fit Web 2.0 into analytical and business models from popular business and academic thinkers.

One of the authors quoted is also one of my favorite teachers from MIT, Eric von Hipple. von Hipple spoke of democratizating innovation and Lead users long before the term Web 2.0 was invented. Innovation with products,he said is not limited to the entity that creates the product but all other stakeholders who interact with the product: its users, resellers, etc.

Other models included in the book are Porter's forces, Gladwell's theory of Mavens, connectors and salepersons, Rogers' adoption curve and Chris Anderson's Long Tail.

The book uses more than its share of buzzwords: Prosumers, Mashups, Freemium, to name a few. It speaks of Salesforce.com that makes CRM easily available for those who cannot by traditional CRM software suites like Oracle. Today, Saleforce.com is more a warning than an example.

Web 2.0 speaks in detail about the business models of companies like Flickr, Linkend and Facebook. In. My problem here is much like as those who critique Web 2.0? Where is the bottom line?

Web 2.0's success stories are few a far between. Google is the biggest of these. Netflix is another, as it can be considered the Blockbuster killer. Amazon's zshops is another great success story.

All in all, one may read this book and evaluate its theories in the light of happenings in the present. While some models have their merits, unfortunately many serve as warnings.

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Book Review: Black Wind

While the last two James Bond movies seemed to focus more on Bond, Clive Cussler's novels are more reminiscent of the Bond movies of old and seem to have all the necessary ingredients. The tall handsome hero, Dirk Pitt is Cussler's own alter ego who shares with his creator,many commonalities like working for NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Association, NASA's counterpart in the ocean. Another commonality is that both Pitt and Cussler have a common hobby of collecting vintage cars.

Clive Cussler's Pitt has been around for more than a decade and unlike Bond, he has aged since then. As the plots came along, Cussler realized he had to remedy this situation. He decided to clone Pitt. One of his older novels featured the adventurer unite a son, Dirk Pitt Jr. and a daughter Summer, the older Pitt never knew he had.

Black Wind is a Dirk Pitt Jr and Summer adventure. It has all the ingredients of an older James Bond movie: the damsel in distress, the dashing hero and of course the maniacal villain with a plan that threatens the future of humanity. There are the other Bond cliches including the one Austin Powers always picked on: the failure of the villain to kill the hero when the hero is in his captivity and providing the opportunity for the hero to escape.

This tale begins in 1944 when a Japanese submarine armed with biological weapons is headed for the US to carry on a mission of mass carnage on the Americans. the sub does not complete its mission and lies harmlessly in the depths of the ocean causing no threat to anyone.

This is until a North Korean tycoon decides to seek the deadly contents of the sub and wreak havoc on the US in his demonic plan. The stage is set for Dirk Pitt, his sidekick, his twin sister and all the other Cussler characters to join hands and save the day.

Black Wind is an enjoyable read and is highly recommended.

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Book Review: Blue Ocean Strategy

This classic by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne is one of the best business books of our time. The authors classify Corporate competition into two segments, Red Ocean where firms compete for market share and Blue Oceans where one firm grabs the helm and makes the rest of the completion irrelevant. 

The authors begin by using the  example of how Circ Du Soleil used the blue ocean strategy to create a niche for themselves, making traditional circuses like Barnum and Bailey obsolete.  What I liked about this book is that it is clear, concise and well written without excessive repetition. 

The authors also offer a clear framework for firms to create a blue ocean strategy.  This involves creation of a strategy canvas, a graph that identifies key factors of competition used by companies in the red ocean strategy. Rather than focus on the obvious factors like price and value firms must compete on 'Value Innovation', according to the authors.

After one creates the strategy canvas, the authors then demonstrate on a graph of four quadrants how firms can start to create a blue ocean strategy. In the first quadrant, they list all factors that a firm creating a blue ocean strategy out eliminate. In the second quadrant, they list all the factors that a firm could raise to add value. 

Then in the 3rd quadrant they list factors that blue ocean firm would seek to raise and finally in the forth quadrants all the new factors that must be created in the new product or service that the blue ocean firm would seek to create.

Some examples of blue ocean strategy include

• the iTunes legal alternative for music downloads, eliminating the red ocean of music CDs
• the Dyson alternative of bag less vacuum cleaners 
• the [yellow tail] wine offering of wines which were sold as alternatives to beer and coolers eliminating red ocean competition from the wine industry.
• do CoMo's offering of Internet services on cell phones in Japan.
• the growth of Texas based Curves fitness centres, offering a easier alternative for staying fit to busy adults.

Creation of a Blue ocean strategy involves

• Looking beyond your existing customers.
• Looking for commonalities among your customer segments and for ways to serve all of them.
• Looking for ways to promote one's offering with fewer barriers to adoption.
• Trade offs between functional and emotional solutions for a customer.
• Avoiding the red ocean trap of looking at number and focusing on the big picture.
• The authors prescribe a sequence of actions to incorporate the strategy and insist that these steps are done in the correct sequence

1. Look for buyer utility
2. Look for price accessibility with customers
3. Look to attaining your cost targets
4. Seek to eliminate barriers to adoption
5. Buyer utility is defined by six 'levers' or areas: Purchase, Delivery, Use, Supplements, Maintenance and Disposal. A blue ocean strategist would look into 

• Eliminating blocks to customer productivity in these six areas
• Creating simplicity, convenience fun and an image in the six areas
• Seek to eliminate risk in these six areas
  
• Eliminate blocks to environment friendliness in these areas.

To execute your strategy,

• You must win over the naysayers in your organization particularly from the bottom
• Allow the naysayers to 'experience' the pain from the current situation or solution
• Meet the unhappy customers
• Be transparent, fair and seek inclusion of all the stakeholders in the new processes of the blue ocean strategy

This is an excellent business book and almost offers a 'paint within the squares' approach, which many other books seem to forgo. This book is a must for any business book collection.

An interesting observation: Many reasons have been offered for New York City's sudden fall in crime by Guiliani, the authors of Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell. This book offers the Blue Ocean theory on this very subject. 

 

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Book Review: Cross

Alex Cross, the character popularized by Morgan Freeman in 'Kiss the Girls' and 'Along came a Spider', is back. This one is a younger version of Cross, probably more romantic. As the novel's tale progresses, he is soon widowed by a mysterious killer and raises two children with his grandmother.

Alex is now in private practice, having quit the FBI and has made a truce with himself that his wife's murderer has got away. Then his former FBI colleague Samson shows up, seeking help on a case, a case that offers a chance of retribution. A low life in custody has offered Samson a deal, claiming that he knows the killer of Alex's wife.

There is another parallel plot involving a handsome, twisted hit man who mutilates, rapes and kills his victims at the bat of an eyelid. He has a vendetta of his own against, a mob boss's son who betrayed him. Could this be the killer but Alex's wife? Cross is an excellent read, fast paced and riveting. This is the best Patterson book I've read.

An interesting observation:

The hitman's name is Michael Sullivan and he has a vendetta against his mob boss's son. Why does that sound so familiar?

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Book Review: Arkham Asylum

If you believe that comic books are for kids, you need look further than this one, to change your opinion. Arkham Aslum is a classic film-noir, psychological thriller, disguised as a Batman comic.

The art work and the writing transport the unsuspecting reader into a nightmarish journey into the depths of the human mind. This is unlike any other Batman tale you have read or seen.

It features two parallel plots, one from the past and one in the present. The past plot is the pitiable tale of Arkam, a humanitarian doctor who must make peace with his destiny, one in which his loved ones have been taken away by the most vicious of killers.

The asylum, his former mansion is now dedicated to imprisoning the most twisted specimen in society is where the second plot begins. It is these twisted psychopaths who now control this dark and morbid place, holding the staff hostage within. Their demand is simple. They want Batman.

If you're guessing that this is a classic hostage situation, you would be mistaken. This is not a tale of how Batman saves the day for innocent victims, but a tale where the dark knight must face his own fears, his past and all the deep dark secrets that lay buried in it.

The usual suspects are in this tale too, the Joker, Two Face, Clay Face and Scarecrow, all dealing with their own insanity and trying to breakdown Batman and his resolve. It is a story, that also tries to go into the murky depths of the criminal mind and tries to explain how some of them think.

Arkam Asylum is violent and gory and would get an R or NC17 rating if one was to rate graphic novels. I was simply amazed, that it was not as long as I thought it was. The past and present intermingle at the end of the book, to create one of the best and unexpected endings I've read in any Batman comic.

Arkam Asylum is hailed as the most successful graphic novel of all time. This is for good reason. Grant Morrison's story-telling and Dave Maclean's splendid artwork make this a must for comic book lovers. This is the 15th aniversary edition of the book also features an afterword by the editor and the complete script and annotations from the author.

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Book Review: Road to Perdition

Having reviewed the movie a couple of weeks ago,Let us now critique the graphic novel that inspired the flick. Authored by Max Allan Collins and with artwork from Richard Piers Rayner, this book is a black-and-white work of art.

It is a tale of a mob enforcer, Michael Sullivan and his quest for retribution when the son of his boss, John Looney brutally executes his, Michael's son and wife. Despite the fact that Hollywood stars Hanks and Newman collaborated to make the movie version worth watching, the book stands a few notches above the movie.

The art work is brilliant and the plot in the book moves faster than the movie. The dialogs in the book are crisp and well written. Unlike Tom Hanks' unassuming rendition of Sullivan, the one in the comic book version is quick witted and more fearsome, more in line with his nickname, the Archangel of Death. The book is more action packed and gripping than the movie, which is saying a lot.

The book has many real life characters like Ness, Niri and Capone making cameo appearances. While the movie has stayed faithful to the book for the most parts, it has chosen to alter certain parts, part I felt, must have been preserved. In fact the author claims that some of these incidents that were left off from the film were real.

The story of an assasin on the run with a young son is reminisent of the classic Manga series,
Lone Wolf and Cub. Many believe that the author lifted the whole plot from the series. However, the mob element and the oneliners in the book make it a distinctive American story and more like a modern western set in Ilinois in the 30s.

This book is again testimony that graphic novels have come a long way from the ones I read in my younger days. Indeed,by virtue of their language and art, graphic novels like these, have earned their right to be classified as modern literature.

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Book Review: At the Stroke of Madness

This was the first time I've read a novel by Alex Kava. Once again, it is a story of a sleuth, on the trail  of a twisted serial killer.  The sleuth is Maggie O'Dell, an FBI agent, apparently a fixture in most Kava books. 

As the story begins, O'Dell comes to Connecticut to search for a missing woman at the request of  a shrink. She befriends the local sheriff and with his help finds herself at a quarry used as a dumping ground for body parts by some psychopath. The psychopath does not seem to target only the living, but also the dead. He looks for people or corpses with ailments or body imperfections and then 'removes' those ailments.

Yes, this is a macabre book and is quite graphic at times.  Unlike other crime books written by Cornwell and Deaver, this book lacks much of the forensic details that enhance the plot. O'Dell's investigation seems very amteur compared with those of Cornwell's Scarpetta or Deaver's Rhymes. The plot does move fairly smoothly but I was expecting more twists and turns. A passable read is my final verdict.

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Book Review: Innovate like Edison

Sometimes, the best nuggets are found hidden in the bargain rack of your local Borders bookstore. That was exactly where I found this book, that for some reason, seems to have slipped the bestseller radar.

From the bestselling author Michael Gelb who produced 'How To Innovate like Leonardo Da Vinci' comes this hidden jewel. While one cannot become an Edison by reading a book, one can certainly learn from his mental framework that helped him create  his ingenious innovations. The book presents a coherent set of ideas that the reader can apply in  our times.

The authors Michael Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott have not got carried away in their hero worship of Edison. In the early chapters, they discuss Edison's follies, including his close association with Henry Ford, a racist and Edison's mistreatment of his first wife.

Nevertheless, there is much to learn from Edison's thought process. Edison epitomized the quintessential American dream as an entrepreneur, inventor, capitalist, employer and leader.

Edison's modus operandi is broken down into five core competencies. The first of them which the authors call Solution Centered Mindset, involves keeping one's goals in line with one's desires, being optimistic, constant learning and experimentation and cultivating objectivity. As is often said, 'Find a job you love, and you'll never have to work a single day in your life.'

The next competency is called Kaleidoscope thinking. The suggestions here are simple. Keep a notebook, generate unbiased ideas, observe patterns, draw your ideas on paper or on some other visual medium and exploring offbeat solutions.

Full spectrum Engagement, the next competency is all about living with seeming paradoxes. These include focus and relaxation, work and fun, sharing and protecting knowledge, complexity and simplicity, single and team activities.

Master mind collaboration, the forth competency is about strength in numbers, also called the wisdom of groups. Edison was a genius in his own right, but breaking the myth of the isolated genius, Edison collaborated extensively with others. He built teams with diverse individuals in them. His companies promoted open knowledge sharing and rewarded teamwork. Edison went out of the way to network and built extensive relationships. There realtionships  helped promote himself and his Edison brand.

The final competency is about creating 'Super Value'.  The authors suggest the following: 

• Link market trends with the competencies of your firm. 
  
• Tune into your customers. 
  

Edison's companies were known for their excellent service. The authors suggest applying the right business model and offer these choices

• Licensing technolgy to others and from others, 
• Franchising
• Licencing products to others internationally in order to customize your product in different markets and providing training for product use.

The authors discuss scaling products to service more customers and finally building one's brand using both quality and showmanship. 

This book is a valuable part of my library and belongs with the bestseller lists. Maybe, the authors did not follow their own advice in promoting their work.

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Book Review: Freakonomics

I loved every moment of reading this book. It is outlandish and out of the ordinary. However, there was one facet, or lack thereof that stood out. It was the lack of a cohesive theme. All the anecdotes and stories broadly and somewhat loosely fall into the category of 'Hidden details that tell the real truth.'


The latest edition of this book also has additional material from their New York times column and from their blog to enhance the reader's experience. (Don't skip this part!)

Here are some of the anecdotes that are presented in the book. Reading the book about the details of these anecdotes can either be hilarious ( as in my case) or outright offensive.


1. The real estate agent is not really trying to get the best deal for you. It may not be worth her time and effort to sell your house for the best price.

2. Street drug dealing in cities Chicago has an organizational structure and hierarchy that can put large organizations to shame.

3. Anyone can be dishonest, provided the stakes are high enough. Does this sound improbable? The author presents findings in schools and rigged sumo wrestling matches, all based on statistical data to make this point. He almost made me a believer.

4. Information, particularly the rise of the internet is the enemy of any organization that has secrets, be they the KKK or real estate firms.

5. Could it be that the biggest deterrent on your resume is neither your experience or your education. It is what you put right at the top: your name.

6. Crime all over the US has diminished in the last decade. It was not Guiliani, or more cops-patrolling the street. It was Roe vs. Wade. (Pro-life fanatics are duly warned about this material.)

7. Can we find a hint of racism or age discrimination on a TV quiz show?

8. Voting is your civic duty, but does you vote really matter?

9. Drug related crimes have gone down over the last decade, but drug use is still rampant?

10. This book offers unique solutions to catch cheating teachers, people who do not clean up after their dogs and so on.


The lack of a unifying theme has been acknowledged and criticized by many readers. I felt that it did not matter. It was still as educational as any of the works of Gladwell or the other boo I have reviewed here. Why must books have a unifying theme? Why must stories have an end?

Levitt and Dubner have a new fan. I am now a regular visitor to the Freakonomics blog and also follow the authors on twitter.

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Book Review/Summary: How to become a marketing superstar -Concluded

Questions to Answer : Answer the following questions about the product on

-Market Segmentation

-advertising

-positioning

Product

-Why was it made?

-What is the raison d'etere for the product?

- What is your reasoning for selling it?

- Where can it be used?

Customer

Why does she buy it?

What need does it solve for her?

Selling strategy

-What benefit does it solve?

-Ask 'So what' for each benefit.(Derive benefits from features)

Quantitative:

How will the customer situation be improved?

Competition

What is customer using now? Why?

What are the disadvantages with the with current product?

How does your product compare with theirs?

How do you price to value?

Can you dollarize the returns on the product?

Who else is using product? Get details

What evidence have you got on product claims?

You must answer these questions. If you don't know the answers, find them.

Completely, objectively and correctly answer:

Why do customers buy your offering? Why do some choose otherwise?

Why do they buy from the competition?

What will it take for you/your competitor to get all the business?

Who are your customers' best suppliers? Why?

The answers can be hard to hear. Do not depend on the sales people to deliver honest answers.

Do not run from bad or unpleasant answers.

Get the answers from new or potential customers.

Compete for 'inches'.

Fight for every share.

Make one more call per week. Return every call. Send more ads to magazines. Never let up. Do not let victory be an inch away.

What can you do to reduce complaints, increase costs.

Archive and resurrect past promotions.

If it resonates with customers, reuse it.

Do not get strategy amnesia.

Old products and customers may mean new opportunities.

Repolish the silver.

Always sell inside first.

People are resistant to change. Sell to them and take away doubt.

You must convince them to do something new, different or do not want to do.

Resistance to new ways may be legitimate or imaginary. Some honest people may need new ideas.

Make presentations to get more acceptance.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of better.

If you are a little better than the competition, sell your product now.

Own a market, not a mill.

Factories or mills do not sell things.

Markets are the source of revenues.

Mills take money. Markets will make it.

Mills are hard to move.

Markets are fast to respond.

Markets make mills. Mills make what markets want.

Loss leaders are for loosers.

These are products that sell for a loss. The hypothesis is that the customer will buy another product instead of a loss leader. It is an excuse.

The larger the rebate, the more the customers who will collect it.

Never run a 3 page spread ad.

It is burning money.

It costs as much to run good advertising as it does to bad advertising

Shrink to Grow.

Shrinking sales can spur growth. Shrink the territory to grow.

Shrink market segments into new niches.

Throw appeals at the customer seeking to overwhelm.

Never let up. Always communicate, sell.

Dominate the customer's consciousness.

Your competition is lurking around you. Be aware of this. Do not underestimate the competition. Keep customers happy all the time. They are your first line of defence against the competition.

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Book Review: The Coffin Dancer

Once again, Lincoln Rhymes and his beautiful cohort Amelia Sachs are on the trail of a psycho hired assassin who enjoys blowing up his victims with his ingeniously made bombs. Paraplegic Rhymes is as always, ably assisted by his high tech toys to solve such crimes.

Technology assists. For instance, it can tell Rhymes that the hair samples left at a crime scene belongs to three cats. However, it cannot go beyond this. It's Lincoln's judgement to deduce that the cats do not belong to the killer, based on his profile. The cats therefore belong to someone who is harboring the killer and that the cops must find this person before it is too late.

This is just one example of how Lincoln uses his analytical ability.


This time around, Sachs and he find themselves in a forty five hour cat and mouse game with a madman, of whom they know only one fact. He has a tattoo of a maiden dancing with the grim reaper. They also know that he is a master at covering up his tracks. Has Rhymes finally met his match?


Whether it is collecting evidence from a crime scene or the modus operandi to handle a bomb on an aircraft, Jeffrey Deaver can explain details at least as well as any other author. Coffin Dancer is a riveting page turner, with a shocking twist at the end.

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Book Review/Summary: How to become a marketing superstar -II

•  Advertise and sell with figures, not adjectives(less, more, economical).-Use facts and data
  
• Get samples of all advertising tools used now- Everything a customer might see- Are they consistent? This fosters brand awareness.
• You should change. Once you change, change everything to reflect that change.
• Be a customer of yourself- Read the advertising- Is it clear. Call the 800 number- How is the customer service?

-Read customer complaints.
-Read your billboards on the move
-Fill warranty claims
-Return the product

• Fix or improve the issues you face.
• Banish all buying barriers: Do not torment your customer with warnings.

-Review and revamp your policies.

-Have enough change as possible in the register.

• Fast 15 Rules

-Teaser ads are worthless. Get to the point

-Coming soon ads are announcements. They are OK

-Channels are not customers

-Know the products that sell

-There is a cost to cost cutting.

-Selling is God, not the sales force.

-Ads that don't sell are a waste of money

- The end of a sales transaction is most memorable to a customer.

- Get the customer to invest in the sales process.

- Have a quantifiable selling options

- Remember customer names 

• Superstars favor recessions

-This is a time to get new customers

-Hire new talent

-Get rid of under-performers

-Partner with customers to launch products.

-Be relentless.

-Adopt a 'thrival' attitude.

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Book Review/Summary: How to become a marketing superstar -I

One of the few drawbacks of the SDM program at MIT, that I was lucky enough to graduate from, is that we do not have a course in Marketing. So here is one of the books I recommend to
to fill this void.

Jeffrey Fox's book, How to become a marketing superstar has a concise and clear marketing message.
Here are my notes from th book:

The old notion that 50% of advertising is wasted and that no one knows which 50% is a myth.The effectiveness of advertising and marketing is measurable.

• Getting and keeping customers is everyone' job, regardless of title or job description.
• 'The definition of marketing is simple, the doing or marketing is hard.'
• Successful companies do what the top guys do. They sell,sell, sell.
• All money in an organization is 'customer money'.
• Customers fire employees everyday.
• Each employee and department must generate more than they consume. Otherwise, they will be eliminated.
• Divide your customers into OK and not OK. Infact there are four groups: Sophisticated OK, sophisticated not OK, unsophisticated OK and unsophisticated not OK. This is subjective division from the marketer's
  
• Sophisticated OK: Big companies, low margins
• Sophisticated not OK: A big risk, can cause employee burnout
• Unsophisticated OK: Low Margins, They may bear the price for training, extras
  
• Unsophisticated not OK: Avoid this entirely
• Then decide on selling, service,billing plans
• Love the OK customers.
• The customer is not always right. The right customer is always right. She is profitable, pays her bills and pays for what she buys. They can be fair, tough, needy, insistent or give good referrals if they satisfy the OK rule
• The bad customer is not OK. They may not be profitable.
• The seven growth levers:
• Innovate
• Add new end customers in new markets, new geographies
• Sell new applications of existing products to existing customers
• Identify and reduce customer attrition
• Raise prizes.
• Pray for market demand
• Acquire companies
• Delegate people or resources to these levers.
• Have a growth notebook. Test and execute ideas
• Love you brand. Believe and understand your brand. Protect your brand from misuse.
  
• Live the brand.
• Managing the brand is different. This is minding, managing and administrating and can take your brand downhill.
• Hating your brand can spell its doom.
• Dollarization: The calculation of the value of a product. It is not abstract. It is a number. Value proposition, value chain are meaningless without dollarization.
• Dollarization must be based on:
• Go/no go on products.
• Market segmentation
• Product positioning
• Setting price to value
• Let customers understand the payback and the ROI on the product.
• Superstars sell within to suppliers, distributes, colleagues, advertisers
  
• They are polite, persistent, honest.
• They work long and hard.
• Price to value
• Customers do not buy products. They buy value based on need,
• Price based on the value received from the customer, not your production costs.
• Do not mirror your competitor pricing.
• Target gross market pricing, a common approach is not the right strategy though competition can force it sometime.
• Pricing requires customer knowledge, dollarization value and courage.
• Price cutting causes price wars. They kill or maim you and the competition.
• Improving price increases operating income.
• Compete on product quality, store location and employee attitude, not on price.
• Always tell you customer the consequences to not buying your product. It is a great motivator to buy. This is more effective than telling the customer what he will save.
  
• Derived Demand: Unlike direct demand, the product is a component of another product that is used for resale.
  
• Direct demand can be enhanced by advertising. The number of consumers determine the effectiveness of direct demand.
• When a derived demand customer cuts price, they do not influence the customer and have thus made a bad decision.
• Supermarketer must-knows:
• Having a customer
• Customers buy to gain pleasure and avoid pain
• People buy value, not products
• Dollarize value and benefits
• Who, what and why
• Group the customers as aware users, aware non users and unawares,
• Quality, directing R&N and sales are marketing responsibilities
• Train sales force to pre-plan, ask questions and to respond to questions.
• On all sales calls, ask for an order.
• Execution, execution and execution.
• Brandnames are intellectual assets
• Every product is branded. Use customer tested brandnames.
  
• Technology does not sell itself. Marketing does.
• Brandnames:
  
• Must be developed. Do not use company jargons or internal numbers.
• Do not use the product category or initials as brandnames.
• Brandnaming is not a popularity contest.
• Brandnames on product characteristics is good.
• They do not have to have meaning
• Brandnames must be memorable, easy to pronounce.
• Wrong words can use trigger negative feelings or distaste or confusing.
• A good brandname cannot sell a product.
• Always put a brandname in the headline. It is the hero.
• Turn brandnames into stars.
• Never use I,me, we, us, our. Customers care only about themselves, not you.
• Build brand awareness. Not 'we' awareness.
• Articulate the difference. For this, you must research the product. Use numbers and facts.
• Never use bad words in advertising and selling:
  
• We,me, I, us, Our,- Use the company name
  
• Solutions- State the solution
• Quality - This is defined by the customer
• It- State what 'it' is.
• Technology- There is no high tech, only old and new.
• Lifetime
  
• Source- State the source.
• Difference

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Preludes and Nocturnes

Many of us turn to comics or Graphic novels as they are now called, as a form of stress relief and to escape into some 'light reading'. Though I hate admitting it, reading a graphic novel can be intense and harder than just settling down with a paperback.

With novels, our eyes move linearly, through words that become sentences and these sentences become paragraphs and then ultimately the pages of the book. While reading a graphic novel, one cannot just read the text. She must always look at the 'big picture on the page. In particular she must study the images to get a sense of context and then examine the characters who are speaking the dialogs and the 'non verbal' clues in their expressions. Sometimes the flow of the plot is horizontal and sometimes it can be vertical, sometimes even diagonal. With graphic novels like this one, the plot itself is pretty surreal and hard to absorb until you 'get into the groove'.

There was my little 101 on Graphic novels. Let's discuss this one.

I have said many times before that Frank Miller and Alan Moore are the greatest of comic novelists. I will now add a new member to this elite group, Neil Gaiman. With this book, Gaiman began one of the most popular series in comic book history. When it comes to prose, Gaiman's comic is another indication that comic books have come a long way from where they used to be in the past

The story is a page turner holding the reader breathless throughout. At times I asked myself, 'What was this guy smoking when he wrote this?'. This masterpiece is a classic amalgamation of folklore, history myth and Gaiman's fertile imagination.

The book begins with a mysterious cabal conducting an enigmatic ceremony. Their goal is to entrap the grim reaper himself, death. However, something goes awfully wring and the cabal end up entrapping not with death, but with death's younger brother, Morpheus, the god of dreams and nightmares. Gaiman portrays this entity as a strange looking man, with a bad haircut.

Morpheus escapes from his captors after languishing in his prison for seventy years. He realizes that in order to regain his powers, he must get back three of his belongings, belongings that were taken away from him, during his years in captivity.

The rest of the book is about Morpheus' adventures and ordeals as he must travel to New York, then to Hell itself and finally to the Arkam Asylum in Gotham, the city of Batman. If this is the first time you are reading this book, I can guarantee that you have not read anything like it.

The faint of heart be warned: This is not the comic book you read years ago, when in high school. It has plenty of 'adult situations', gore and violence. All in all, it is a masterpiece. Wait till you meet Gaiman's personification of the grim reaper.

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Book Review: Cold Moon By Jeffrey Deaver

In the vast array of modern day crime fiction writers, Jeffrey Deaver stands heads and shoulders over the rest. His engrossing narrative and familiarity of the territory of crime scene investigation puts his books in a higher caliber than those of the Baldaccis and the Pattersons. (Only Patricia Cornwell’s books come close to Deaver's works when it comes to details in crime scene investigation.)

Like many of the classic detective writers before him, he sticks to the age-old trend of giving his sleuth an unusual name. The protagonist in this book, as in many of his other works, is Lincoln Rhymes. Rhymes is a paraplegic ex-cop who is confined to his residence because of his condition. He is ably assisted with every high tech gizmo that one in his situation would need to solve crime. Amelia Sachs, Lincoln's regular sidekick, usually serves as Lincoln’s eyes and ears in crime scenes or in investigating witnesses. This time, she is occupied with problems of her own, problems that can ruin her career.

Lincoln must make do with a rookie, who hero-worships him. The rookie is trying hard to please Rhymes, which is no easy feat as the latter is a demanding boss who has little patience for sloppiness.

This time Lincoln must chase a devious mind who goes by the nickname ‘Watchmaker’. The Watchmaker is a psychopathic cold blooded killer who lacks anything close to human emotion. He too, has a sidekick who hero-worships him, a young man who has an irresistible urge to rape his victims and looks to the Watchmaker as a role model.

To catch the Watchmaker, Rhymes must follow a trail of clues left by the Watchmaker. At each of his crime scenes, the Watchmaker leaves behind a clock, challenging the law to come after him. Will Amelia deal with her own crisis to help Lincoln catch one of his most devious preys or will Rhymes have to make-do with a tyro assistant?

Another of Deaver's well known sleuths, Kathlyn Dance also makes an appearance in this book, to help Rhymes in his investigation. While Rhymes' expertise is in forensics, Dance specializes in kinethetics,which is the study of the body language of witnesses and make judgements on their credibility. Deaver seems well versed in writing on this subject as he is with forensics and high tech crime solving.

The last parts of the book is a series of twists and turns in the plot, which left me a little overwhelmed. Nevertheless,Cold moon is impossible to put down.

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Book Review: Supercrunchers by Ian Ayres

In Blink, Gladwell presented a view that in order to make an effective decision an expert’s decision is far better than market studies and statistical analysis. Supercrunchers by Ian Ayres is the perfect antithesis to this view.

Ayres opens Supercrunchers with two anecdotes, one where an expert statistician outperforms wine tasting gurus as to the price of wine for several years. The other story is of a statistician who outperformed experienced talent scouts when it came to pick rookie baseball hitters.

He goes on to talk about regression and its superiority over expert opinions in predicting future outcomes. Unlike expert opinions regression also predicts the accuracy of the outcomes it predicts.The book transplants the reader into a magical world of large quantities of data(Terra bytes and Peta Bytes).

Here are some of his examples of companies using regression.
Farecast is a site used to predict when to buy an airline ticket.
EHarmony is one of many sites used to match singles based on several compatibility criteria.
Google works though petabytes of data and has an ambitious plan to scan every book ever published and offer search functionality on them.
A casino uses regression based on its customers’ profiles to determine the pain-point for its customers. When a customer reaches this point, an employee comes to the aid to the customer and pulls him or her away from the slot machines aby offering perks. The result is that the visit to the casino a pleasurable experience for the customer and will make him or her come back to play again.
Statistics can also be used to predict how a judge may vote based on a certain case.
Credit card companies use spending patterns to predict the stability of marriages.
The IRS holds so much information on us. This information could be used by the population for beneficial purposes.


He tries to make a case for EBM or evidence based medicine where a doctor can use statistical data to make decisions on patients instead of mere theory he or she learnt in med school.

He also believes that Hollywood could use analysis to predict the probability that a movie will be a hit, long before a single scene is shot. The analysis is made purely on the screenplay.

Ayres also talks about the use of Neural Networks for evidence based medicine. Neural Networks unlike regression cannot predict the accuracy of their decisions.

In the last part of the book, Ayres tries to win votes for his theories by showing the user the value of standard deviations and how they can be used in decision making. He also describes Bayes’ Theorem in great detail reminding me of the ERBA(Enterprise Risk Benefit Analysis) class I took at MIT.

I loved this book and think it, like Blink must be required reading for the SDM program as it offers another perspective on decision making, this time in favor of decision making techniques taught at MIT. Big surprise, as the author is a PhD from MIT. Reading this book was time well spent. The best part of this book is that it is only 217 pages long, though its content at times was a bit ‘heavy’.

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Book Review:Blink

Do not crowd the issue with facts. Nine out of ten statistics are wrong.(Including this one.) We could go on and on. Can we make the best judgement calls when we have too much information? Not according to Malcolm Gladwell, the author of blink.

In 'Tipping Point' Gladwell presented a theory where a small spark creates a massive fire in several unrelated fields. This time, in Blink, he take on, in my opinion a more ambitious undertaking. He tries to explain how in many circumstances a snap decision can be far better than one made with massive quantities of data and too much research.

As with his previous work, he cites numerous examples to illustrate his point.Here are a few:

A couple of experts in a museum had a 'hunch' that a statue acquired by the museum was a fake despite the fact that many others had scrutinized it in great detail, even under the eye of an electron microscope.A hospital official at the Cook's County hospital came up with an algorithm on handling a deluge of patients who were at a risk of a heart attack. The algorithm picked out the patients at a greater risk at a much better rate than the doctors who had years of experience in treating such patients.Gladwell analyzes in great detail how experienced policemen make a better judgement call about the imminent danger they face when they confront someone on the street. The younger ones on the force are impulsive and make snap judgements based on inherent biases that often lead to disatrous consequences.The famous Cola wars are another example of market research gone awry. In a taste test, most people preferred Pepsi to Coke. The Coke company created another Cola that was closer in taste to Pepsi. It was a disaster causing coke to loose millions of dollars. It turned out that while Pepsi won the taste test, Coke won out when one had to choose to drink a whole can.
At MIT, we would call Gladwell a great Systems thinker as he has the ability to explain his views on several types of 'Systems'. His theory that we must apply the detail analysis approach to smaller problems and the blink methodology to more complex problems sounds a bit suspect to me. Having said that, I think this is a book that must be required reading for the SDM program that I completed at MIT, simply because it gives another perspective on decision making. Gladwell's writing is always interesting, rich with examples and keeping the reader waiting for the theory to unfold.

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Book Review: The Tipping Point

‘Riveting’ is not a word usually used by a reviewer to describe non-fiction. However, it precisely describes how I feel about Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping point. Brilliant anecdotes and food for thought make this book a lucid read. I know this book was out in 2002 but it slipped my radar until very recently.

What causes the tipping point for something to break the thresholds and multiply exponentially, not over a period of time but in one short burst?What do the following things have in common? An unstoppable disease that ravages a population, a TV program that glues millions of kids to the screen or a sudden decline in crime in a large city?

All of these examples, argues the author have some common factors: A few individuals or entities with certain traits, a factor that enables the spread to persist which the author calls the stickiness factor and finally a context for the spread to survive.

Critics of the book argue that this book does not have the ‘how-to’ factor. It does not tell you how to spread or stop the spread of a phenomenon but offers a mental pattern that one may be able to adapt to his situation (or context). This book makes no claim to be a business book and must not be interpreted as one. I have little doubt however, that a smart individual could use the patterns here to promote a product or service.


The Law of the Few


The individuals or entities who spread the word or disease , Gladwell postulates are few in number and fall into three categories. There are the connectors who are in touch with a lot of people but may be close to few. Gladwell insists that the famous six degrees of separation theory is made possible, thanks to some of these well connected people.

He categorizes another group of people as Mavens. These are the dynamic knowledge banks who are ready and willing to spread a phenomenon for no real monetary gain. Finally, to spread the phenomenon on a large scale, one needs efficient salespeople.


The Stickiness Factor


Gladwell explains the stickiness factor in great detail. He uses two children’s TV shows to make his point, Sesame Street and Blues Clues. While Sesame street banked on the short attention span of its young audience to break its show into disconnected segments. Blues Clues used the opposite strategy using a single story line narrated by its host and both were phenomenal successes in their times. I love the way Gladwell disects the motivations behind these shows to make his point.

The Power of Context

Next he explains what he means by the power of context. Wayne Dyer once quoted someone’s great saying that circumstances do not create men, they reveal them. However, Gladwell argues that quite the opposite is true. A person’s reaction to any situation will be determined by his environment and not his intrinsic personality. This means that by simply cleaning up the graffiti on the walls in your neighborhood, you could make it gang free in no time.

The book features numerous case studies and examples to illustrate Gladewell’s framework. This is one of the most informative books I have read in a while.

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Book Review: Step on a Crack

This is another run of the mill tale from Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. The plot opens somewhat promisingly. The first lady is fatally poisoned and the perpetrator swears that this is only the beginning.

The funeral of the diseased is held in a huge church in New York and is attended by high profile people who include Politicians, Wall Street bigwigs and media celebrities.The church is sieged by a mysterious group of terrorists and as expected they are making demands.

Thrown in the situation is the protagonist, Michael Bennett, a NYD cop and former negotiator. Though he is never in any physical trouble from the terrorists, the task of rescuing the funeral attendees fall on his already burdened shoulders.

Bennett is the father of ten children and his terminally ill wife lies in a hospital close to the church. This is an attempt by the authors to be a thriller-cum-tearjerker and falls flat in both areas.

After watching movies like the 'Negotiator',I found the book pretty mediocre.
My verdict for this book is: Forgettable!

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