Publishing company Penguin has started a Typepad blog called The Penguin Blog. They are only two entries in, but it will be interesting to see how these media company blogs play out. I think most agree that the typical reader has no idea what publishers they are reading. Will this help readers find their books?
Update: Two quick things…this is Penguin UK doing the blogging and they have been podcasting since October 2005.
HBS Working Knowledge has a Q&A with HBS professor Carliss Baldwin. She has been doing work on the citizen innovation with Eric von Hippel and Christopher Hienerth. I think the piece has some interesting things to say the idea of user innovation. These three looked at the sport of rodeo kayaking and studied the evolution of equipment. I think most interesting is the inflection point where innovation is tapped out by the user community and companies enter the market and drive down costs.
If you are interested in the topic, I would also point you to the ChangeThis manifesto written by Eric von Hippel titled Citizen Innovator.
I have a pile of books that sits on my desk that I promise myself I will get to. Doug Rushkoff’s Get Box In The Box has been there for awhile. I finally picked it up and liked what I found. Rushkoff is a little long winded in getting to his points, but I think it is worth your time. I am going to share some of the stories from the book in a series of posts.
This first topic of interest is the idea of knowing your business in deep and powerful way. This is really where the title of the book comes from. Rushkoff says companies are wasting their time looking for the next thing. What they need to spend time on what they are already doing and know it better than anyone else. He compares XM to Sirius and how they came to market.
While Sirius inappropriately applies the generic, out of the box strategies of other businesses to the specific case of a new technology and market, XM got back in the box to reinvent both radio and the business model surrounding it from the inside out.
Although Sirius was the first in space, first to IPO, and first to market, it quickly lagged behind its upstart rival, XM. The reasons are clear. While an impatient Sirius made the mistake of farming out its chip design to Lucent spin-off Agere Systems, XM assembled an in-house team of former Motorola engineers and steamed ahead. Without direct access to, or even knowledge of, their own research and development, Sirius suffering incapacitating production delays. XM, on the other hand, made its technologists central to the business and ended up innovating over and over again. And despite Wall Street’s predictions that XM would forever lag Sirius, it actually made it onto the air almost a full year earlier.
XM didn’t stop there. It pioneered the SKYfi boombox, MYfi personal receivers, and a variety of new distribution channels for satellite, including commercial jets and Internet streaming. XM’s in-house technologists also gave it the ability to make its single best business move to date: a partnership to install XM-capable radios in General Motors and Honda vehicles. Marrying technology development with innovative business strategy, XM CEO Hugh Panero invited automakers to be part owners of the company, making them stakeholders in creating the success of XM. Panero’s willingness to reconfigure XM’s billing and accounting departments to mesh seamlessly with GM’s (And why not? They’re just spreadsheets!) was what ultimately won over the auto giant. Using similar strategies, SM has made deals to pipe its music into Starbucks, and has even convinced Microsoft to embed XM into its new Mediaplayer. Of course, knowing how your technology works makes you much more capable of imagining what your technology can do.
This lines up with the thoughts of Chris Zook in Profiting from the Core and Beyond The Core. Companies never tap out the possibilities of their core business and are instead in too much of a hurry to do something different. These efforts end in failure the majority of the time. Rushkoff points out that if you know your knitting, the possibilities are endless.
(I’ll be posting on the book all week, so stay tuned…)
Lulu is again doing the Blooker Prize. This contest is devoted to “blooks”–books based on websites such as blogs and webcomics. This year the top prize is $10,000 and the two top category winners each get $2,500. The deadline for entry is January 15th, 2007.
Fortune has a blurb on two books in their Business Life section (pg 190, 7/31/2006).
They recommend The Futurist by James Othmer. Dan Pink was telling me about this book at BEA back in May. Othmer is a Young & Rubicam exec and writes about a fictional corporate guru who suddenly realizes everything he has been saying is hogwash.
The second book is The Accidental Investment Banker by Jonathan Knee. The review claims the intrigue and drama of 24 told through the true stories of his ten years at Goldman and Morgan Stanley.
If you follow Tom Peters, you know you’ll get alot of big statements and exclamation marks.
Peters has declared Adams vs Jefferson: The Tumultous Election of 1800 his management book of the century.
“The point of the title of the Post and thus the anointment of the Adams-Jefferson book is that it is the clearest snapshot-recitation of this raging war over the distribution of power, the nature of man and the effectiveness of enterprises that I’ve ever read. The author also manages to keep the tension high, Clancy-like even. Though I know my history, at this point, two-thirds of the way through the book, I’m not sure whether Jefferson, following an apparent, paper-thin electoral victory, will be allowed to take office as the terrified “centralists” (Federalists, remember) struggle, somewhat akin to 2000, to retain their hold on, even then, the presidency and Principal Seat of Power.”
I’ll let you read the whole post to get his full excitement over the book.
From time to time, we’ll post quotes from authors who get quoted in the media.
“The container came at a time when everyone in America was concerned about automation, not just on the docks. The thing that was unusual about the longshoremen was that they got compensation for the loss of their jobs, which most people in the economy did not.”
Marc Levinson, author of The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger quoted in How Longshoremen Keep Global Wind At Their Backs: As Trade Soars, Union Workers Prosper by Staying Up With Technological Change; Threat of a Day Without Ports (WSJ, 7/26/04).
I forgot to mention Jack and Suzy Welch have a new book out in October.
I found it a little funny given the Fortune cover story.
It is going to be titled “Winning: The Answers” and published by Collins.
[I am not making that up.]
Chris Anderson responds to Lee Gomes’ column [sub. needed] directly with a post on The Long Tail blog.
I think Guy Kawasaki has written one of best posts on The Long Tail. He is very complementary of the book, and lays out clearly the conditions that have to exist in your market for Long Tail economics to take effect.
It is a Must Read – The Wrong Tale: A Checklist for Long-Tail Implementations.
