Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
In many ways Digital was like a frog in gradually boiling water. If you drop a frog into already boiling water, it will jump right out, but if you put the frog into cool water and then start to boil it, the frog will not notice that the water is heating up until it is too late. One of the likely reasons that Digital did not change its strategy in t
... See moreMichael E. McGrath • Product Strategy for High Technology Companies
As an example, early on at eBay
Marty Cagan • INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group)
In 1999, the Web start-up advice was to create a “portal” such as Yahoo! or AOL—a website that acted as a guide to the Internet and provided a protected “playground” of specialized Web pages that users were herded toward. But although these companies were the stars of the moment, their initial strategies of capturing and channeling Web traffic were
... See moreRichard Rumelt • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters
Gurley cast cold water on the proposal to go public, however, by asking, “Is it built to win?” He explained, “GM is built to last, but it’s got so much bureaucracy, it’s not going anywhere.” Maybe “built to last” was not the right criterion to optimize on.