Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy
Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer
discounts of up to 90% on
Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't. Check out the link below:
>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers
Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't ReviewCompromises are inevitable and usually involve a trade-off in one form or another. In the business world, Kevin Maney suggests that there is an ever-present tension between quality and convenience, more specifically between what he calls "high-fidelity" and "high-convenience." He provides in this volume what Jim Collins suggests in the Foreword, a "strategic lens" that "does not in itself give an answer about what you should do, and not do. Rather - and much better - it forces you to engage in a powerful question, from which you derive your own insight and make your own decisions...The power of a strategic concept [such as the one Maney shares] lies first and foremost in giving us a lens and a stimulus for hard thinking and hard choices. The critical question is not its universal truth, but its usefulness. And in this, I think Kevin Maney has extracted a very useful framework."
Maney cites the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, as an example of a business leader who obviously did some hard thinking before making a critically important decision. During a program at a conference that Maney attended, "Hastings said that his strategic decisions at Netflix were driven by one simple core principle: People are willing to trade the quality of an experience for the convenience of getting it, and vice versa." It occurred Maney that Hastings' core concept "was a terrific lens for viewing the way the world works. It can be an invaluable insight when dreaming up new products, when positioning brands, when planning company strategy, or when analyzing competitors."
Each day, business leaders are required to make decisions that involve trade-offs of one kind or another. I agree with Maney that "how they play out in the marketplace is the key to countless business successes and failures." That is what Maney characterizes as "the fidelity swap" and there are five key concepts behind it: fidelity (i.e. the total experience) versus convenience (how easy or difficult it is to get what you want), the tech effect (i.e. technology's impact on improving both fidelity and convenience), the fidelity "belly" (i.e. "the no-man's-land of consumer experience"), the fidelity mirage (i.e. that product or company can achieve both high fidelity and high convenience), and super-fidelity or super-convenience (i.e. this defines the "winners" such Apple's iPhone and Wal-Mart, both of which got to top of one axis or the other...but never attempted to reach both). Maney also identifies two significant additional factors: social accelerants that increase the importance of personal relationships even more and "wrecking ball" moments that occur when a new product or service (e.g. digital cameras in 2000) "smashes" a market sector and creates an entirely new one.
I was especially interested in Chapters Five and Six in which Maney discusses Super Fidelity and then Super Convenience. Is Super Fidelity possible? Yes, difficult but possible. Is it sustainable? Yes, but that's much more difficult to do. As Maney explains in detail, "Corning, the glass company, has thrived on high fidelity for 150 years." Others have done so for much shorter periods of time, notably the aforementioned Apple iPhones, Whole Foods, Cirque du Soleil, and Bose. "Perhaps no one in business understands fidelity better than casino owner Steve Wynn." With regard to Super Convenience, Maney cites and discusses several examples that include MTV, Century 21, McDonald's, and 7-Eleven. "One of the all-time kings of high convenience in the retail industry is Wal-Mart." However, as Maney then explains, Wal-Mart seemed to develop a corporate brain freeze" about 2000 when it "started doing things that were out of step with its long heritage in super-convenience," such as opening stores in the center of major cities (e.g. New York and Chicago) and carrying higher-priced, more fashionable clothes and advertising in upscale magazines. In an attempt to increase its aura, Wal-Mart was forgetting its roots as the lowest-cost retailer. Eventually, there was a corporate flaw, inner-city stores were closed, fashion ads and pricier clothes were eliminated, and a new marketing campaign was launched, based on the promise "Save money. Live Better."
In his essay The Hedgehog and the Fox, Isaiah Berlin divides the world `s creatures into hedgehogs and foxes, based on an ancient Greek parable: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Jim Collins picks up on this idea in Good to Great when introducing the Hedgehog Concept, explaining that "it is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely critical." Near the conclusion of Trade-Off Maney recalls a moment while reading Good to Great when coming upon the discussion of the Hedgehog Concept. "It's the notion that great companies figure out what they can do better than anyone else in the world, and then relentlessly focus on that. But the Hedgehog Concept doesn't just apply to companies - it can apply to an individual, too."
Maney then recalls a conversation with Collins. "He said that there are two ways to get to the top. One is to climb an existing ladder, which can be a bit crowded. The other is to make your own ladder, and put yourself at the top. It's a twist on the Hedgehog Concept - if you can't be the best in the existing category, figure out what you can be best at, and create a category that fits." Few companies achieve and then sustain either High Fidelity or High Convenience. (To the best of my knowledge, no company has ever achieved and then sustained both simultaneously.) Committing to one or the other requires all manner of trade-offs, based on hard thinking to make hard choices. To those now involved in that immensely difficult process, Kevin Maney offers a wealth of valuable information in combination with sound advice. In fact, I presume to suggest that his book is a "must read."
Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't OverviewWant to learn more information about
Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't?
>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now
