An exceptionally quick and handy read for those who are in the early stages of your startup journey. If you are thinking of following the lean startup approach of conducting qualitative interviews with your potential customers, this book is a must-read.
Of all the examples and learnings he shares, I love the mom and son conversation, which I borrow into my classrooms (mostly my MBA classes) to explain the importance of listening to customers before you sell the solution. The book is embedded with several nuggets of learning for the early stages of an entrepreneur.
I would recommend this one for all early-stage entrepreneurs.
One of my quests is about how organizational cultures get formed. My search got me to this handy book, which I suggest entrepreneurs do read—preferably early on in their venture so that they give themselves the time to build the organizational culture and allow for its development before they get to the growth phase where it’s the recruits and culture that would take over more of what they are doing through direct intervention.
Daniel in The Culture Code breaks down the process of forming a culture for successful groups into three phases. The first emphasizes building safety into the culture, allowing for people to develop trust. The second emphasizes the role of sharing vulnerability in building the exchanges that would allow for trust to strengthen within the team and develop cooperation among the teams. And lastly, the role purposes play in the continuation of the group performance once the team culture has begun to take root.
I would recommend this one for all early-stage entrepreneurs.
This book by Nikhil was sponsored by the Marico Innovation Foundation to study the scaling up of eight organizations to emerge as the top player in their own fields. No, it was not intentional that I went out searching for another book by Nikhil Inamdar the same year. It is just one of the coincidences.
Given the mandate of talking about these eight ventures, I think Nikhil has done a great job of presenting the stories of the eight ventures. I loved reading the stories of the following eight companies in the book: Tanbo Imaging, Goonj, Rivigo, ISRO, Forus Health, Agastya International Foundation, The Better India, and St Judes.
The academician in me, however, began asking the question, so what? What could we extract from these eight that we could generalize? This is one layer that I would have loved to see in this book. I understand it may not have been the objective of the book, but I feel it would have given it a sense of direction having read the stories.
I have known Nagaraja Prakasam (Naga) since 2014, when he became the resident mentor at NSRCEL. He used to regularly sit at the “Naga Tree” close to IIMB and mentor startups who came to see him. Over the years he has invested in several of startups, and a recent post of his where he mentioned his debut book won the GLF-WWF Green Honours award suggested the count stood at 18. The book focuses on building how Naga is helping build a sustainable future through his work with entrepreneurs and several ecosystem enablers.
I had not purchased the book and had been postponing that, but Naga was keen on developing a course on social entrepreneurship and sought some assistance. When I mentioned I had not yet read his book, he got it couriered right away. I finished reading the book—actually, the book is a breeze to read—and written in simple language.
I believe the book is inspired by “My Experiments with Truth” (MET by Mahatma Gandhi). Naga does mention the impact this book had on him, but in here I feel the style also seems to mostly match. MET shares several experiments that Gandhiji had conducted in his pursuit of truth; in here, Naga shares a lot of these interactions with social entrepreneurs, enterprises, and life-altering conversations. As a reader you will know Naga more closely—the thoughts that motivate him and the perspective he carries.
I, however, felt the number of experiences he shares was a bit too many to my liking. As someone who has been used to thinking and working with and towards some framework, I felt this section has been missing from the book. I wish several of the thoughts could be structured to create a pathway for others to refer to. But that is also possibly not Naga’s fault. It is me as an academician looking for generalization— as a reader, you may be perfectly fine with the rich stories he shares.
I recently completed reading the book “Business Model Innovation Strategy: Transformational Concepts and Tools for Entrepreneurial Leaders” by Raphael Amit and Christoph Zott and thought of resuming my age-old habit of writing up book reviews.
I had picked up this book to read for two reasons: 1. First, as a mentor, I generally prefer using the business models as a background framework (while sprucing it with the concepts from effectuation and the lean start-up method) when I am working with early-stage venture ideas. I felt there could be something this book could contribute additionally to my practice. 2. And second, as an academician, I have extensively studied some of the papers that Amit and Zott have been developing as a stream of literature on business models. I was curious to observe how they would stitch their years of academic work into a book that a broader audience would read.
I feel the book has done justice to the academic work on which it has built its help, and I see a lot of integration with several strands of literature from strategy, innovation, effectuation, opportunity discovery, lean, and many more. This got me to enjoy the book as an academic reader.
Wearing the practitioners’ hat, the book does a decent job of communicating the broad ideas and seems to have structured the flow well. The numerous examples are well placed in illustrating the concepts. However, I would have liked a few linkages to tools and material that would have elaborated the ideas for application. In some ways, I feel the book let go of the chance of delivering a higher value to the practitioner audience as the blue-ocean strategy had done. I guess this may have been because the practitioner variant of business models had come into the market several years ago, as the book – Business Model Generation.
Personally, for me this book has provided some useful concepts that in collate my desperate thoughts from my application during mentoring sessions, and also highlighted new ideas of how I could present some of my learning to the audience of entrepreneurs. I promise to work on this one soon.
Overall, I think if you are willing to do the hard work to connect the concepts to the application. This book is a good read. Otherwise, it leaves a wide-open space for practitioners like me to extend its application and utility into our own domain areas.
I just finished an extremely interesting book on entrepreneurship by Peter Thiel – Zero to One, and thought of sharing what I look as take away from the same.
For me the books sheds light on some of the subtle but important factors that would compose a high impact tech ventures. The essence of the following questions is what the book really delivers.
The Engineering Question – Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
The Timing Question – Is now the right time to start your particular business?
The Monopoly Question – Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
The People Question – Do you have the right team?
The Distribution Question – Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
The Durability Question – Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
The Secret Question – Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?
I would recommend this book to every one who is thinking of starting a tech venture, and may be re-read it!
ಇತ್ತೀಚಿಗಷ್ಟೇ ನಾನು ಕಾವ್ಯ ಕಡಮೆ ನಾಗರಕಟ್ಟೆ ಬರೆದ “ಪುನರಪಿ” ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯನ್ನು ಓದಿ ಮುಗಿಸಿದೆ. ಇದು ನಾನು ಓದಿದ ಪ್ರಥಮ ಕನ್ನಡ ಕಾದಂಬರಿ. ಇದರ ಮುಂಚೆ ಲಲಿತ ಪ್ರಬಂಧಗಳ ಸಂಕಲನಗಳಷ್ಟೇ ಒಡ್ಡಿದ್ದೇ. ಈ ಪುಸ್ತಕದ ಬಿಡುಗಡೆಗೂ ನಾನು ಹೋಗಿದ್ದೆ. ನನ್ನ ಸ್ನೇಹಿತನಾದ ಸಂತೋಷ ನಾಗರಕಟ್ಟೆಯ ಜೀವನ ಸಂಗಾತಿಯಾದ ಕಾವ್ಯಳ ಪ್ರಥಮ ಕಾದಂಬರಿ ಯಾಗಿದ್ದರಿಂದ ಈ ಸಂತಸದ ಕ್ಷಣದಲ್ಲಿ ಭಾಗಿಯಾಗಬೇಕೆನಿಸಿತ್ತು. ಇದರಂತೆ ಅವರಿಬ್ಬರೂ ನನಗೆ ಕೊಟ್ಟ ಆಮಂತ್ರಣ ಸ್ವೀಕರಿಸಿ ಹೋಗಿದ್ದಕ್ಕೆ ಆಗಷ್ಟೇ ಬಿಡುಗಡೆಯಾದ ಪುಸ್ತಕದ ಪ್ರತಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ತಮ್ಮ ಶುಭಾಶಯಗಳೊಂದಿಗೆ ಸಹಿಯನ್ನು ಸಹ ಕೊಟ್ಟಿದ್ದರು.
ಈ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಕಾವ್ಯ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಂಡಿರುವ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ತುಂಬಾ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಮೂಡಿಸಿದ್ದಾಳೆ. ವೃಧ್ದಪ್ಯ ಮತ್ತು ಸಲಿಂಗ ಕಾಮದ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಕೈಗೆತ್ತುಕೊಂಡು ಸುಲಲಿತವಾಗಿ ಕೃತಿಯನ್ನು ಮೂಡಿಸಿದ್ದಾಳೆ. ಕಥೆಯ ನಿರೂಪಣೆ ತುಂಬಾ ಅಚ್ಚುಕಟ್ಟಾಗಿದ್ದು ಕುರ್ಚಿಯ ಅಂಚಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಕೂತು ಕುತೂಹಲ ಕೆರಳಿಸುವಂತೆ ರಚಿಸಿದ್ದಾಳೆ. ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಬರುವ ಎಲ್ಲ ಪಾರ್ತ್ರಗಳು ತಮ್ಮ ತಮ್ಮ ಛಾಪುಗಳನ್ನು ಮನಸಿನಲ್ಲಿ ರೂಪಿಸುತ್ತ ನಡೆಯುತ್ತವೆ. ನನಗೆ ತುಂಬಾ ಕುತೂಹಲ ಕೆರಳಿಸಿದ ಪಾತ್ರವೆಂದರೆ ಸಂಜೀವಿನಿಯದ್ದು. ಪ್ರಾಯಶಃ ಆ ಪಾತ್ರದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪವೇ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಇರುವುದರಿಂದಾಗಿ ನನ್ನ ಮನಸಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ಕುತೂಹಲವಿದ್ದರೂ ಇರಬಹುದು. ಇದೇ ಕಥೆಯ ಸಂಚನ್ನು ಮುಂದುವರೆಸಿ ಇನ್ನೂ ಬೆಳೆಸಬಹುದು ಅನ್ನುವುದು ನನ್ನ ಪ್ರಥಮ ಅನಿಸಿಕೆ. ಅಥವಾ, ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯ ಕೊನೆ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ವಿಭಿನ್ನವಾಗಿರಬಹುದಿತ್ತು ಅಂತಲೂ ಆನಿಸುತ್ತದೆ. ಪ್ರಾಯಶಃ ಈ ಅಂತ್ಯವನ್ನು ಇನ್ನೊಂದು ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯಾಗಿ ಮೂಡಿಸಬಹುದು.
ಈ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಯು ಕಾವ್ಯಳ ಪ್ರಥಮ ಕಾದಂಬರಿ ಎಂಬ ಯೋಚಿಸಿದರೆ ಇದು ನಿಜಕ್ಕೂ ಒಂದು ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನ. ಇನ್ನೂ ಹೆಚ್ಚೆಚ್ಚು ಉತ್ತಮ ಕೃತಿಗಳನ್ನು ರಚಿಸಲಿ ಎಂದು ಹಾರೈಸುತ್ತೇನೆ. ಇಂತದ್ದೇ ಪ್ರಯೋಗಗಳು ಮುಂದುವರೆಯಲಿ ಎನ್ನುವುದೇ ನನ್ನ ಆಶಯ.
One the classics that most mentors ask their technologically enthusiastic proteges to read through is “Crossing the Chasm”. Moore through his years of experience working with numerous technology startups focuses on the very specific challenge faces by early stage entrepreneurs – “The Chasm.”
The Chasm refers to the phase when the business has to make a transitions from its early adopters (called the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) to the larger mass market (including pragmatists, conservatives and laggards).
The challenge of this transition phases requires the entrepreneur to take tough calls and show the necessary tenacity to be able move past the Chasm Phase. Crossing the chasm is an essential phase for the venture to be able to really become a market leader and a force to recon. Moore doesn’t stop by highlighting the characteristics of the chasm, but also provides a few tactics for these early stage startups are extremely handy for those who are facing the challenge of this transition.While I find the book extremely relevant, there are however nuances one would need to develop for the Indian market scenario where the B2B market scenario is not yet well established. Some of the startups have been able to make the leap and generate a sustainable business venture or create an exit for themselves have been able to do it through interesting tactics and focus shifts. I shall possibly write about these in another blog, and keep this short.
Recommendation: I would just follow the numerous wisemen ahead of me and make a recommendation for all aspiring entrepreneurs to read through this book. This book is best read with other handy books which talk about the startup challenges- “The Lean Startup”, “Running Lean”.
Strategy is loosely used by every other person who intends to communicate the possibility of an underlying plan or something they find hard to understand! This is a generally held notion and often I engage into a debate saying that is not strategy! They then ask what is strategy and used to wonder how do I communicate in precise terms. I think I found my answer with this book.
Strategy is not vision, its not possessing an audacious goal. If someone attributes these piece-meal to be indicative of some strategy rest assured this is an incomplete understanding. A good strategy consist of a kernel (composed of three parts – A good diagnosis, A good guiding policy and finally coherent action). Rumelt goes on to show why a good understanding of strategy is important and essential to gain an advantage in business.
To all those people who ask me if there was one book which could help them understand what strategy really stands for here is a classic by Richard Rumelt. Rumelt compresses the rich academic scholarship into this book buttressed with real life situations that he came across as part of this life as a faculty and a consultant.
If you haven’t read it yet and want to understand the essence of strategy, this is one book you have to have in your library.
There is a website that you might like to access built based on this book:
