First Friday Book Synopsis

MARCH 14, 2014

Geoffrey Moore is Managing Director, Geoffrey Moore Consulting; a venture partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures, Chairman Emeritus, TCG Advisors, The Chasm Institute and The Chasm Group; and a member of the Board of Directors, Akamai Technologies and several pre-IPO Companies.

IPO 75

IPO Marketing Strategy Consultative Technology 75

Great Leadership By Dan

JULY 15, 2016

You’ve been up to your ears in the details of planning and developing new product features yourself or with your partner, but now you have too many growing management responsibilities to do as much of that. Actually, even if this is your choice you still need to pick from #1 or #2 until the company is in good shape for sale or IPO.

IPO 120

IPO COO Dunning Delegation 120

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

In light of Snap’s IPO , there has been an immense amount of speculation about the long-term viability of the company’s strategy. Don’t Confuse Products and Platforms. Products and platforms are fundamentally different, but easily confused. I’ll share four of these principles here. a platform)?

IPO 9

IPO Productivity Products Strategy 9

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 20, 2014

From early on, Google employees were encouraged to spend a significant portion of their time on interesting side projects, with the idea that some of these projects would become new products. How Google innovates. Bala Iyer and Tom Davenport attempted to “reverse engineer” Google’s innovation machine in 2008.

IPO 15

IPO Management Engineering Innovation 15

CEO Insider

OCTOBER 6, 2021

The best way to make your product high end is to price it at a premium. A lot of business owners are afraid to charge more for their product or services because they have limiting beliefs about their buyers. The higher pricing creates an immediate perception of value. There are many consumers out there who […].

Brand 110

Brand Tips Magazine Price 110

N2Growth Blog

FEBRUARY 8, 2019

Maybe you’re prepping for the IPO. When you started out you rightly focused on developing your unique new product, service, or solution. He is graduate of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business’s LEAD program in Corporate Innovation. You came up with an awesome idea. Your singular focus has been to make it real.

Delegation 203

Delegation Maturity CEO Execution 203

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Yelp's IPO filing comes hot on the heels of successful IPOs and high valuations for Angie's List and Groupon. But new ways of searching for products may start to change this dynamic. Yelp's timing reflects both a tech-friendly market and the company's current position as the dominant consumer-review web site.

IPO 14

IPO Business Model Review Advertising 14

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Call 2014 the year of innovation. Google Trends reveals that interest in disruptive innovation crept up to peak levels this year. It seems that every time you hop on a quarterly earnings call, the CEO mentions innovation. If innovation is the foundation to building the future, this focus should be reassuring.

Long-term 11

Long-term Innovation Company IPO 11

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 21, 2016

When financial services company Square priced its IPO at $9 a share last November, well under the $15+ price that private investors paid the year before, it was a cold shower of reality for the 6-year-old company. Until the IPO, Square had been one of more than 130 unicorns: privately owned tech companies valued at $1 billion or more.

IPO 8

IPO Innovation Price Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

As a price strategy consultant, it's common for managers and sales people to enthusiastically pitch me on a strategy of "let's get them in the door with a big discount, they'll love our product or service, and then return to pay full price." This is because drastic discounts devalue a product and are often viewed as acts of desperation.

IPO 10

IPO Discount Price Business Model 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 23, 2013

The most motivated and productive people I’ve seen recently work in an older company on the American East Coast deploying innovative technology products to transform a traditional industry. Their products are early stage, which means daily frustrations as they run through successive iterations.

Motivation 11

Motivation IPO Norton Open-book 11

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 8, 2017

For instance, Snapchat’s recent IPO filing revealed that the company grew revenues by 600% (to $404 million) in 2016. Entrepreneurship aids economic vitality by getting rid of complacent incumbents, accelerating innovation, and creating jobs. Jeff Bezos, the company’s CEO, understands that innovation is a numbers game.

Innovation 8

Innovation Bureaucracy IPO Bottom-up 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 26, 2011

In the last year, however, early-stage investments in clean energy production technologies have fallen substantially (see the table at the end of this piece for more detail). A star example is Google, which raised a mere $40 million in private funding before its IPO at a $23 billion valuation.

Energy 11

Energy Finance IPO Biotechnology 11

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 1, 2011

Microfinance has come under fire in the past 18 months, triggered in part by SKS Microfinance's IPO. It was always meant to be a "social innovation," a way for corporations to make a profit at the same time that they do something good for society. And all of those innovations are opportunities for businesses.

Microfinance 13

Microfinance IPO Bottom-up Finance 13

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 8, 2012

Amid the flood of social media IPOs during the last 12 months, another "old guard" tech company has quietly built one of the most dominant, fiercely loyal and profitable social media businesses to date. Xbox Live not only provides big margins, it is an incredible defensive moat when the next-generation product platforms come out.

Media 15

Media Company IPO Business Model 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 8, 2012

Amid the flood of social media IPOs during the last 12 months, another "old guard" tech company has quietly built one of the most dominant, fiercely loyal and profitable social media businesses to date. Xbox Live not only provides big margins, it is an incredible defensive moat when the next-generation product platforms come out.

Media 13

Media Company IPO Business Model 13

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Great universities will spur firms to design and manufacture products locally. With Facebook’s $115 billion market cap on its IPO day, Mark Zuckerberg created wealth nearly equivalent to half of Nigeria’s GDP in 2012. The value created by Facebook and a few other tech IPOs exceeds the GDP of most African regions.

Education 8

Education Technology IPO GDP 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Venture capitalists are increasingly interested in emerging markets, and in working with local funds based in those markets (despite the fact that reverse innovation in venture capital seems counterintuitive). In effect, the VCs at Nadathur Holdings serve as the executive team for a miniature healthcare innovation ecosystem.

Marketing 15

Marketing Venture Capitalist Biotechnology IPO 15

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 2, 2016

True platform innovators aren’t just market matchmakers using data-driven algorithms to drive better buyer-seller matches; they invest in new value creation. Where traditional business models sell products and/or services, matchmaking models sell reduced transaction costs. What really makes them work? Insight Center.

IPO 8

IPO Human Capital Insurance Business Model 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2016

New, growth-hungry businesses are disproportionately likely to innovate and to create jobs. More of these productive, young firms would mean faster economic growth. Getting better at it can’t hurt, but really boosting innovation and entrepreneurship will take more than a little extra seed funding.

Venture Funding 9

Venture Funding IPO Finance Constraint 9

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

Gimmy’s task was clear but highly demanding: to reimagine the way BMW innovates. To fill the void and build such a new BMW startup unit, Gimmy partnered with an experienced innovation manager from BMW, Matthias Meyer. Gregor and BMW faced a crucial question: “How can the BMW Group, as a company, co-innovate with startups?”

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 6, 2012

When big business leaders think about social media they tend to focus on three things: innovative technologies, marketing applications, and IPOs — the three factors that make Facebook and Twitter so hot. But if that's the focus, it's surely misplaced. The German car site motor-talk.de

White Paper 10

White Paper IPO Media Film 10

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 7, 2013

"Free" product competition strikes again and the latest casualty is Weight Watchers, whose CEO recently left the company in the midst of the onslaught of free weight loss and fitness applications. A big obstacle to launching a free product, of course, is the worry that it will hurt revenues at best, and possibly destroy the business at worst.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Advertising Discount IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 5, 2011

As Dick Morley — an MIT manufacturing innovator with deep experience in the auto industry — put it to us, "the trouble with big companies is that they take nice high-risk, high-return opportunities, then manage the risk out of them to the point that there's no return left." Certainly, that's a fair accusation.

Entrepreneur 14

Entrepreneur Innovation Intellectual Capital Mission Statement 14

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2016

For example, as it grew, Facebook found that its early “move fast and break things” culture had to be funneled into focused technical teams and product groups to make its product development process faster and less erratic, and for it to have a chance of meeting the demands of its new public shareholders following its IPO.

Banking 14

Banking Strategy Film Operations 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 21, 2014

Clearly articulate this need as soon as you begin, because no matter how well researched or innovative your solution, you won’t get support if the need isn’t apparent or convincing. And in short order, the company achieved consistent double-digit sales growth — and a successful IPO. Does the firm need a new IT system? The price tag?

IPO 9

IPO Audience Chief Information Officer Case Study 9

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2012

The innovations that made these companies worth billions of dollars could be classified as computer hardware and software infrastructure. Design at its best is more than just a beautiful interface, it synthesizes complex technology with a deep understanding of end users' motivations and abilities into a unified, intuitive product experience.

Venture Capitalist 17

Venture Capitalist Software Entrepreneur Engineering 17

Rajesh Setty

DECEMBER 4, 2008

We used agile method to build the product using the latest open source stack and some mashups with a few online services. The product will be platform-agnostic as we mentioned and we think that we will “ cross the chasm &# because of the viral nature of the application. You can say that we are sort of using cloud computing a bit.

Blue Ocean Strategy 30

Blue Ocean Strategy CPM Licensing Open-book 30

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2012

The innovations that made these companies worth billions of dollars could be classified as computer hardware and software infrastructure. Design at its best is more than just a beautiful interface, it synthesizes complex technology with a deep understanding of end users' motivations and abilities into a unified, intuitive product experience.

Venture Capitalist 17

Venture Capitalist Software Entrepreneur Engineering 17

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 9, 2014

The most successful, visionary entrepreneurs dream not of millions of dollars, but of a world where their products change culture. It is incredibly hard to hold an IPO. Ultimately, high-risk venture capital investors need to be rewarded, ideally with high returns, for an ecosystem of innovation to be sustainable.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Venture Capitalist Mezzanine Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 4, 2016

Even when startups have great products and customer interest, they struggle with long-term growth. Founders may lack the skills and interest to lead those activities effectively — what they typically love is dreaming up and building products. Often, our research shows, the biggest obstacles are the entrepreneurs themselves.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Sample IPO Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 29, 2012

The heady winds of Facebook's IPO have left in their wake gnawing questions about the durability of the social network behemoth's brand, as critics point to declining revenue growth and a less-than-spectacular earnings outlook. But the troubled IPO should direct attention to more fundamental elements of the company's strategy.

IPO 12

IPO PR Brand Globalization 12

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 29, 2015

Brian Fitzpatrick joined Google as a senior software engineer in 2005, shortly after the company’s IPO. Companies like Google and 3M have benefited from embracing innovation that comes from all parts of the organization. What are the key actions of strategic leaders who drive innovation without formal authority?

Strategy 8

Strategy Power Idea Generation Project 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 30, 2013

For that reason, the "Lean" mentality is one of the most powerful tools in the innovator''s arsenal — in startups and mature corporations alike. That has resulted in some misconceptions that can be counterproductive in the quest for innovation. In a good start-up, these characteristics are not hard to find.

Company 9

Company Ries Maturity Innovation 9

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 16, 2014

Apple is a company with phenomenal products and profits. Massive buybacks rewards parties who have contributed the least to Apple’s products and profits. The only time in its history when Apple raised funds on the stock market was its 1980 IPO, which provided it with $97 million. Apple Economy Innovation'

Safe Harbor 9

Safe Harbor Hedge EPS Price 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 27, 2014

But unlike most Japanese innovations, it did not come from a big established firm. The consummate loner, Harano would likely have stayed off our radar screen, except that one day his unpredictable behavior led to a fantastically successful product. In fact, the idea for the product itself came from a female secretary at Altus.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Venture Capitalist Business Incubator IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2012

One of our most striking findings was that of the entrepreneurs we surveyed who had a successful exit (that is, an IPO or sale to another firm), about 70% did NOT start with a business plan. Instead, their business journeys originated in a different place, a place we call the Heart. Think big, start small, then scale or fail fast.

Planning 20

Planning Mintzberg IPO Entrepreneur 20