Escape Velocity audiobook

Not as groundbreaking as Crossing the Chasm, but generally useful read. Companies have a structural bias for investing in things today that cause it to starve out the new products and services that will generate growth in the next 2 -3 years.Hierarchy of powers:Category Power – the demand for a class of products, for example smart phones, fuel-efficient cars, or energy bars.*Category maturity lifecycle*Growth/Maturity Matrix*Horizon modelCompany Power – the relative status and prospect for your company compared with peers. For example: Nokia vs. Samsung, Honda vs. Ford.*Competitive separation*Two-business architecture model*Crown Jewels modelMarket Power – the company’s power relative to a market segment, for example Subway in Quick Service Restaurants.*Nine point market strategy frameworkOffer Power – the demand for a product or service relative to reference competitors. *Retain or innovate model*Six levers model*Price/Benefit model*Core/context modelExecution Power – the ability to outperform competitors under equal conditions*The arc of execution“The world is more powerful than you. The market is more powerful than you. Your customers are more powerful than you. And the sum of all your partners and competitors – the ecosystem – is more powerful than you. And just to put the cap on it, nobody really cares about you except you.”“To free your company’s future from the pull of the past, to escape the gravitational field of last year’s operating plan, and to complete the round-trip by returning with next year’s operating plan, you need to apply a force that is greater than the inertial momentum of current operations.”

It provides a series of frameworks for big companies to continue investing in linear and non-linear growth and innovation projects. It focuses on companies having outside-in focus vs many established companies who tend to start solving problems for themselves after a period of time.

Geoffrey Moore is the Rainer Maria Rilke of business authors. So much insight is packed into each sentence that you have to read each chapter very slowly to ensure you absorb everything. Fortunately for the business executive, this book is only about 200 pages long. It's stuffed to the brim with Moore's no-nonsense roadmap for achieving escape velocity, that is, overcoming inertia ("we've always done it this way; why change?") at companies both large and small.The challenge is not in getting executives to understand the material. It's in getting them to act on it. Moore definitely throws down the gauntlet by referring to executives who fail to take strong, sometimes iconoclastic positions, as managers and not leaders. True leaders, at great personal risk to themselves, their careers, and sometimes their companies, take the risky paths, often in defiance of their board, their investors, and indeed, sometimes their employees. Moore makes a compelling case that making asymmetrical bets in risky areas is the only way for companies to achieve escape velocity.This is perhaps the best business book I've read all year, as it's packed with actionable frameworks and rubrics to plan and measure progress. All company leaders and influencers alike inside an organization, no matter what its size, would be well-served by reading this book.

Moore Models for "Take-Off!" - In "Escape Velocity" (EV), Moore takes off with the metaphor of a company getting beyond the gravity and inertia of its current products / services and organization to introduce needed innovation.This book succeeds Moore's previous ones on "Dealing with Darwin" and "Living on the Fault Line" (LFL) that treat the criticality of business adaptation and addressing the vulnerability of mature to "end of life" offerings. In fact EV updates and extends these works as well as incorporating his earlier ones on the introduction of new technologies, e.g. "Crossing the Chasm" and "The Gorilla Game."Moore presents 13 different frameworks or models in EV for examining present positioning as well as opportunities for charting and pursuing new trajectories. For example, he discusses the "Four Modes of Execution" harkening back to the modeling of "Four Cultures" in LFL. Moreover, he cleverly recasts these traits as elements of an "Arch of Execution" in explaining the moves a company can make to achieve its "escape velocity."

It's a thought provoking book and will give you a lot of tools to tackle specific problems as well as a general framework for when you need a vision, strategy or better execution.It's designed to be more of a manual, something you pick-up again in 4 months and start applying the frameworks.Best phrase I've learned from the book = "majoring in minors"

First couple chapters are a little dull, but once you get tot he meat of it and the case studies, it is pretty good. I am not a business person (I am a software engineer), but a lot of people in my company are reading this book and I learned quite a bit about differentiation.

Excellent, will need to reread a few times to fully grasp it, though.

A traditional strategy framework based on a 9-points plan, covering the process of innovation from target customer identification, to marketing positioning. Quick read and easy to follow.

Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past by Geoffrey Moore was chosen by Soundview Executive Book Summaries as one of the Top 30 Business Books of 2011.THE SOUNDVIEW REVIEW:In Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past, author and tech industry expert Geoffrey A. Moore attempts to help executives stand up to the pressure of repeating their current success story.One would assume that with Moore’s feet firmly planted in the tech world that his book would be the latest in the steady stream of books that heap praise on Apple and Google and instruct readers to “simply” do what they do. To his credit, Moore recognizes that, for example, an insurance company in Wisconsin can’t base its economic future on developing the insurance equivalent of an iPad. Readers who would hesitate to pick up Escape Velocity for fear that it won’t apply to their businesses should lay those doubts to rest. Moore does an excellent job of structuring his book to launch from its tech industry base into strategies that are applicable to a variety of fields.At the heart of Moore’s strategy is, as he puts it, a “framework of frameworks.” He instructs readers on the mastery of five powers: Category, Company, Market, Offer and Execution. As with his earlier work Dealing with Darwin , Moore provides numerous tips to give your company both a path to progress and, perhaps of more importance, a way to stand out from the competition.Soundview's 8-page Executive Book Summary of Rainmaking Conversations is available here.

The best strategy book I've come across in a long time.The challenge with strategy is like that with other fields such as technology, is that a new paradigm emerges often once a decade or so, and in-between, while publishing or press ink does not slow-- the field focuses on refining the field's philosophy and toolkit. This 'in-between' state is where I'd argue the field of strategy has been since Chen's Blue Ocean Strategy. Escape velocity is one of those once in a decade books. While written with the CEO in mind, the book is a useful bridge between organizational theory and behavior to strategy and competitive dynamics. Escape velocity is most easily understood by looking at a company such as Amazon.Amazon regularly launches new businesses - from AWS to Amazon Instant Video,Each of these businesses is at a different stage of maturity:Emerging, Growth, Mature and Declining. Each of the business stages. Corresponds to a different horizon. Horizon 3, are the businesses just about to launch that are development (on the path to emerging). In this case, perhaps Amazon's Kindle Phone (a yet to be launched but rumored to be in development product). Instant Video, being a Horizon 2 business-- on the journey from emerging to growth. And Horizon 1 businesses are businesses such as Amazon's Online Retailing of physical dvds and blu-rays.Each of these businesses have different needs and contribute to the long term and current cash flow and returns of the organization. Escape velocity details the role of the organization and leadership in shepherding these businesses through the various stages. And the diverse strategies and strategic options available to each business. The book is useful and insightful summary of the act of managing innovation initiatives through a large multinational organization.

The best portfolio management books I have read so far. As an operation lead for a Fortune 500 high-tech company, this is exactly what I need. I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the position of portfolio managing over $1B Complex-system (high-tech) company. It provides the prescription for generating sustainable future growth within an established enterprise. All the frameworks explained in the book are not just theories, they are practical guide. I worked for the C company that Moore mentioned a few times in his books, where I was the operation manager following the best practices led by Moore's team. Now I am the operation lead in another fortune 500 company, and we are going thru the exact transformation effort. Established enterprises can innovate and can escape from the pull of the past, the question is, do you have the precision and muscle to execute on it? Would like to see more from Moore on tools or quantifiable checkpoint on how enterprise access its own status quo on 'Escape Velocity'.

This is one of those seminal books that I'll be returning to many times, in fact I plan to read it 4 or 5 times cover to cover. I'd like to write some really meaty blog posts distilling and absorbing some of the key points, it is really worth studying and analysing this book.The breakthrough for me was after so many years living in product companies seeing the struggle to create new innovations along side doing business today and thinking that the 'problem' was something specific like 'we need an innovation program', 'we need an idea submission process', some particular exec 'doesn't get it' etc etc, I have changed my opinion entirely. Actually the problem is in the budget allocation planning and the organisational structure.Course like any good idea the trick comes in all the little ways those plans get undone in the doing, but that's what makes it fun !

Great insight into strategic thinking in the technology sector. Very informative and useful case studies at the end of each chapter.I am sure I will reference the book again and again especially for the suggested frameworks. That’s my first book for Geoffrey Moore. Looking to a get another book for sure.

Excellent read for business noob My copy is full of highlights. Worth re-reading. Gives a great vocabulary for concepts otherwise hard to articulate. A bit dense, but not too much.

Fairly interesting and modern business studies. I actually liked this a lot more than most business model generation books I've read, it feels a lot more relevant to the current technology market. There are a LOT of frameworks, though.

Simply fantastic. Geoffrey Moore has a real talent and voice when it comes to business books. This is a MUST READ for any executive or board member.