Products to Platforms

Here are my reading notes from https://hbr.org/2016/04/products-to-platforms-making-the-leap great research article about transitioning from products to platforms.

1. Start with a Defensible Product and a Critical Mass of Users

Platforms connect two or more distinct groups of users and enable their direct interaction—can generate many revenue streams.

A great platform starts with a great product—one that claims a critical mass of customers and provides enough value to keep them from defecting to competitors (in other words, is defensible).

No platform can thrive unless it creates value for those third parties.

Popularity doesn’t necessarily make a product defensible. (Need moat)

2. Apply a Hybrid Business Model Focused on Creating and Sharing New Value

It’s foolish to think that moving to a platform will revive a struggling product.

In a product business model, firms create value by developing differentiated products for specific customer needs, and they capture value by charging money for those items. In a platform business model, firms create value primarily by connecting users and third parties, and they capture value by charging fees for access to the platform.

Thus successful product-to-platform transitions require firms to engage in activities to increase the value of the product while also trying to attract third parties.

Firms stumble when a “product mindset” leads them to view the value pie as fixed.

3. Drive Rapid Conversion to the New Platform

Provide adequate value.
Stay consistent with your brand.
Involve users in improvements.

4. Identify and Act on Opportunities to Deter Competitive Imitation

One effective way to fend off copycat competitors is to identify and control the openings for value creation.

Firms should consider which aspects of their platforms to own and control. (Control own destiny)

读书笔记 - Blitzscaling (Part 2)

 TBD

读书笔记 - Blitzscaling (Part 1)

Blitzscaling is a book about "The lightning-fast path to build massively valuable companies", which was written by Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn cofounder) and Chris Yeh, forwarded by Bill Gates. Whether your business has ten employees or ten thousand, Blitzscaling is the essential playbook for winning in a world where speed is the competitive advantage that matters most. This book talks about "What is Blitzscaling", Business Model innovation, Strategy innovation, management innovation, broader landscape of Blitzscaling, and Responsible Blitzscaling. 

Blitzscaling is a strategy and set of techniques for driving and managing extremely rapid growth that prioritize speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty. Put another way, it's an accelerant that allows your company to grow at a furious pace that knocks the competition out of the water.

Whether you are a founder, a manager, a potential employee, or an investor, we believe that understanding blitzscaling will allow you to make better decisions in a world where speed is the critical competitive advantage. 

The term "blitzscaling" derives from the twentieth-century usage of "blitz" as a way of describing a sudden, all-out effort. The first usage of blitz in this way was to describe the "blitzkrieg" strategy that General Heinz Guderian devised for the initial military campaigns of Nazi Germany in world war II.

Blitzscaling is what we call both the general framework and the specific techniques that allow companies to achieve massive scale at incredible speed.

Classic start-up growth prioritizes efficiency in the face of uncertainty. Classic scale-up growth focuses on growing efficiently once the company has achieved certainty about the environment. Fastscaling means that you're willing to sacrifice efficiency for the sake of increasing your growth rate. Blitzscaling means that you're willing to sacrifice efficiency for speed, but without waiting to achieve certainty on whether the sacrifice will pay off.

Three basics of blitzscaling
1. Blitzscaling is both an offensive strategy and a defensive strategy
2. Blitzscaling thrives on positive feedback loops. In that the company that grows to scale first reaps significant competitive advantages
3. Despite its incredible advantages and potential payoffs, blitzscaling also comes with massive risks.

For business model innovation, the key is to combine new technologies with effective distribution to potential customers, a scalable and high-margin revenue model, and an approach that allows you to serve those customers given your probable resource constraints.  

For strategy model innovation, blitzscaling business tend to play in winner-take-most or winner-take-all markets. The greater risk for a successful, growing business is to move too slowly and allow its competitors to win market leadership and first-scaler advantage.

For management innovation, this is necessary because of the extreme strains placed on the organization and its employees by hyper-growth. Companies that blitzscale have to rapidly navigate a set of key transitions as their organizations grow, and have to embrace counterintuitive rules like hiring "good enough" people, launching flawed and imperfect products, letting fires burn, and ignoring angry customers.

Market size, distribution, and gross margins are important factors in growing a company, but the final growth factor (network effects) plays the key role in sustaining that growth long enough to build a massively valuable and lasting franchise. 

A product or service is subject to positive network effects when increased usage by any user increases the value of the product or service for other users.

Companies with a competitive advantage can quickly grow to the point where the increasing returns of network effects produce a winner-take-most or winner-take-all market. This also explains why the growth factor of distribution is as or more important to company success as the product itself - without distribution, it is difficult to reach the tipping point.

A significant number of operational issues arise simply because of human limitations. As much as we might wish that we and our colleagues could work tirelessly and seamlessly, regardless of the scale of the organization, the fact is that growth causes us to trip over a wide array of issues.

The power of modularity goes beyond just software development and engineering. The power of modularity, this principle makes it possible for a company like Amazon and its customers to build complex products out of smaller, standardized subsystems.

How the role of the founder changes in each stage:
Stage 1 (Family): The founder personally pulls the levers of hypergrowth
Stage 2 (Tribe): The founder manages the people who are pulling the levers
Stage 3 (Village): The founder designs an organization that pulls the levers
Stage 4 (City): The founder makes high-level decisions about goals and strategies
Stage 5 (Nation): The founder figures out how to pull the organization back from Blitzscaling and start blitzscaling new product lines and business units

IBD’S 10 SECRETS TO SUCCESS

I like this, so copied and pasted it here for future reading.

Investor’s Business Daily has spent years analyzing leaders and successful people in all walks of life. Most have 10 traits that, when combined, can turn dreams into reality. Each day, we highlight one.

1 HOW YOU THINK IS EVERYTHING: Always be positive. Think success, not failure. Beware of a negative environment.

2 DECIDE UPON YOUR TRUE DREAMS AND GOALS: Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.

3 TAKE ACTION: Goals are nothing without action. Don’t be afraid to get started. Just do it.

4 NEVER STOP LEARNING: Go back to school or read books. Get training and acquire skills.

5 BE PERSISTENT AND WORK HARD: Success is a marathon, not a sprint. Never give up.

6 LEARN TO ANALYZE DETAILS: Get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes.

7 FOCUS YOUR TIME AND MONEY: Don’t let other people or things distract you.

8 DON’T BE AFRAID TO INNOVATE; BE DIFFERENT: Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.

9 DEAL AND COMMUNICATE WITH PEOPLE EFFECTIVELY: No person is an island. Learn to understand and motivate others.

10 BE HONEST AND DEPENDABLE; TAKE RESPONSIBILITY: Otherwise, Nos. 1-9 won’t matter.

Be promotable

Here are some bulletin points 

• Lead before you are promoted to
• Proactively bring in solutions
• Speak up and contribute more
• Volunteer more
• Be more reliable and following through
• Deliver excellence of what you do
• be ambitious, can do attitude and contribution

读书笔记 - What It Takes

 In this book, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman talked about lessons in the pursuit of excellence.

读书笔记 - Elon Musk (part 2)

 Placeholder to mark my reading progress. Will add note shortly.

读书笔记 - Elon Musk (part 1)

Placeholder to mark my reading progress. My original plan was to complete reading this book in Nov, but now it is turning into 2021.

10 Rules for Building a Business

This is from Walmart founder - Sam Walton https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/history/10-rules-for-building-a-business

1. Commit to your business.
2. Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners.
3. Motivate your partners.
4. Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners.
5. Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.
6. Celebrate your success.
7. Listen to everyone in your company.
8. Exceed your customers’ expectations.
9. Control your expenses better than your competition.
10. Swim upstream.

 When I read through the list, I find it very similar to build a team as a manager.

1. Commit to your work and your team.
   
2. Treat your teammates as partners.
3. Motivate your team.
4. Communicate everything you possibly can to your team.
5. Praise your team.
6. Celebrate your success. Have fun.
7. Listen to everyone in your team.
8. Exceed your customers' expectations.
9. Think two minutes before spend the company's money. (if you think one minute before spend your money)
   
10. Innovate or die.
    

10 key characteristics of a manager

This is from former Walmart CEO - Lee Scott.

1. Hire people smarter than you
2. Ego is the worst enemy of leadership
3. Most of what you say the first time is misunderstood or ignored
4. When people know what you want, they will give it to you.
5. The ability to give honest constructive feedback is a rare talent.
6. Very few people ever feel they are on top of things. There is an underlying fear of failure.
7. Integrity is the single most important characteristic of a leader
8. Sharing praise is a compromise. Give it all away.
9. Even though you feel strongly about something, there is possibility you could be wrong.
10. Your harshest critic may be the most helpful voice you hear.
    

Direct an engineer team

• Scope: Directs the activities of a software systems development function for software enhancements and new products including cloud-based or internet-related tools. 
• People: Selects, develops, and evaluates personnel to ensure the efficient operation of the function. 
• Communication: Participates with other senior managers to establish strategic plans and objectives. 
• Decisive: Makes final decisions on administrative or operational matters and ensures operations effective achievement of objectives. 
• Solution: Works on complex issues where analysis of situations or data requires an in-depth knowledge of the company. 
• Process: Participates in corporate development of methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for projects, programs, and people. 
• Planning: Ensures budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements. Erroneous decisions will have a serious impact on the overall success of functional, division, or company operations. 
• Accountable: Regularly interacts with executives and/or major customers. Interactions frequently involve special skills, such as negotiating with customers or management or attempting to influence senior level leaders regarding matters of significance to the organization. 
• Leadership: Directs and controls the activities of a broad functional area through several department managers within the company. Has overall control of planning, staffing, budgeting, managing expense priorities, and recommending and implementing changes to methods.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

读书笔记 - The Ride of a Lifetime (3)

 Lessons to lead by

• Now more than ever: innovate or die.
• The relentless of perfection.
• Take responsibility when you screw up.
• Be decent to people. Treat everyone with fairness and empathy.
• True integrity - a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong.
• Value ability more than experience, and put people in roles that require them.
• Ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don't understand.
• Don't start negatively, and don't start small.
• If you want innovation, you need to grant permission to fail.
• Don't be in the business of playing it safe.
• Don't let ambition get ahead of opportunity.
• As a leader, if you don't do the work, the people around you are going to know, and you'll lose their respect fast.
• Good leadership is about helping others be prepared to step into your shoes.
• A company's reputation is the sum total of the actions of its people and the quality of its products.
• Handle micromanagement properly.
• You can't communicate pessimism to the people around you. Pessimism leads to paranoia.
• Optimism emerges from faith in yourself and in the people who work for you. It's about believing in your and others' abilities.
• With enough thoughtfulness and commitment, the boldest ideas can be executed.
• You have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly.
• You can do a lot for the morale of the people around you. This is where we want to be. This is how we're going to get there.
• It should be about the future, not the past.
• Treating others with respect.
• If something doesn't feel right to you, it won't be right for you.
• As a leader, you are the embodiment of that company. What people think of you is what they'll think of your company.
• When hiring, try to surround yourself with people who are good in addition to being good at what they do.
• If you're in the business of making something, be in the business of making something great.
• You have to approach your work and life with a sense of genuine humility.
• Hold on to your awareness of yourself, even as the world tells you how important and powerful you are. 

 

读书笔记 - The Ride of a Lifetime (2)

Starting at the bottom

• Excellence and fairness don't have to be mutually exclusive. 
• Think about what I can do differently. 
• Strive for perfection, and care about both the product and the people.

Betting on talent

• His energy and optimism were infectious, and crucially, he knew what he didn't know. 
• They trusted in their own instincts, they treated people with respect.

Know that you don't know (And trust in what you do)

• You have to be humble.
• True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.
• Empathy is a prerequisite to the sound management of creativity, and respect is critical.

Enter Disney

• You have to be attentive.
• You have to learn and absorb.
• You have to hear out other people's problems and help find solutions.
• It is all part of being a great manager.

Second in line

• As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn't distract them from the job they have. 
• You can't let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity. 

Good things can happen

• The success or failure of something so often comes down to the details.
• What was invaluable in my own education is to see the big picture as well as the granular details at the same time, and consider how one affected the other.
• Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. No one wants to follow a pessimist.

It's about the future

• I can't do anything about the past. We can talk about lessons learned, and we can make sure we apply those lessons going forward.
• Priorities are the few things that you're going to spend a lot of time and a lot of capital on. You only get three.
• You have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. 
• The decision marking has to be straighter and faster.
• We'll never get the admiration or the public unless we get it from our own people first. And the way to get the people working for us to admire the company and believe in its future is to make products they're proud of. It's that simple.
• I couldn't let the negativity being expressed by people who knew little about me affect the way I felt about myself.
• It's easy to be optimistic when everyone is telling you you're great. It is much harder, and much more necessary, when your sense of yourself is being challenged, and in such a public way.

The power of respect

• Don't let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision.
• If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.
• If they can't figure out what pricing should be, they shouldn't be in their jobs. But if we believe they should be in their jobs, then they should be in charge of pricing.

Disney-Pixar and a new path to the future

• As CFO, he had a responsibility to the board and our shareholders, which meant not always going along with whatever the CEO had in mind.
• A few solid pros are more powerful than dozens of cons.
• Steve was great at weighing all sides of an issue and not allowing negatives to drown out positives, particularly for things he wanted to accomplish. 

Marvel and massive risks that make perfect sense

• It doesn't make any sense for us to buy you for what you are and then turn you into something else.
• I felt comfortable we could manage the brands respectfully and separately, that they could exist side by side and neither would be negatively affected by the other.
• Surround yourself with people who are good in addition to being good at what they do.

Star wars

• The worst thing you can do when entering into a negotiation is to suggest or promise something because you know the other person wants to hear it, only to have to reverse course later.
• Projecting your anxiety onto your team is counterproductive.

If you don't innovate, you die

• It was the old lesson all over again about the need to constantly innovate.
• Speed was of the essence.
• I referred to a concept I called "management by press release" -- meaning that if I say something with great conviction to the outside world, it tends to resonate powerfully inside our company.
• Being present for your people -- and making sure they know that you're available to them -- is so important for the morale and effectiveness of a company.
  

No price on integrity

• Demanding quality and integrity from all of our people and of all of our products is paramount, and there is no room for second chances, or for tolerance when it comes to an overt transgression that discredits the company in any way.
  

Core values

• Are high quality branded products likely to become even more valuable in a changed marketplace?
• How do we deliver our products to consumers in more relevant, more inventive ways?
• What new habits of consumption are being formed, and how do we adapt to them?
• How do we deploy technology as a powerful new tool for growth?

 

From intern to CEO

The messages and experiences from Enrique Lores, CEO of HP Inc. are so inspiring.

Enrique started his career as an intern at HP, and moved all the way to CEO of HP in the past 30+ years. He shared passion, consistent learning, and thinking are key factors for his success. This actually reconciles deliver happiness, read books, and think 10 minutes every day.

When talking about coronavirus pandemic impact, he mentioned it will change the mindset of WFH opportunity for many CEOs, and for manufactures, need to globalize supply chain, and etc.

He used a garage background in the video call, and that garage was the place where Hewlett and Packard began their company in Palo Alto. This implies his love to HP. If we want to succeed, we need to love the work, be passionate about the work.

He also talked about caring community, caring company, DNA of the company, diversity, innovations, work and life equally important, and many many insights.

When talking about his leadership style, Enrique shared the following points:

• imagination and belief
• risk management
• strategy and execution balance
• team work

Soft with people, but tough with problems. This is my key takeaway from his sharing. This is impressive.

Interview questions

I came across this excellent article regarding interview questions from industry leaders. They are so good that they will be useful for both interviewers and interviewees. That is the reason I copy & paste the questions here for memo, so that I can reference back once in a while, esp. before interview meetings. :-)

https://firstround.com/review/40-favorite-interview-questions-from-some-of-the-sharpest-folks-we-know/

QUESTIONS TO HELP UNPACK PIVOTAL TRANSITIONS:

1. What do you want to do differently in your next role?
2. Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now?
3. For the last few companies you've been at, take me through: (i) When you left, why did you leave? (ii) When you joined the next one, why did you choose it?

QUESTIONS FOR SUSSING OUT MOTIVATIONS:

4. Among the people you've worked with, who do you admire and why?
5. Tell me about a time you took unexpected initiative. Follow-up: Can you tell me about another?
6. What’s something great about your current or previous job? Why?
7. What motivates you to work?
8. Looking back on the last five years of your career, what’s the highlight?

QUESTIONS ON THEIR FIT FOR THE ROLE:

9. What are you really good at, but never want to do anymore?
10. What’s the difference between someone who’s great in your role versus someone who’s outstanding?
11. How did you prepare for this interview?
12. What do you believe you can achieve with us personally or professionally that you can't anywhere else in the world?
13. What are the three most important characteristics of this function? How would you stack rank yourself from strongest to least developed among these traits?
14. Tell me about your ideal next role. What characteristics does it have from a responsibility, team, and company culture perspective? What characteristics does it not have?
15. It's September 5, 2020. What impact on the business have you made in the year since you’ve joined?

QUESTIONS ON WORKING WITH OTHERS:

16. Tell me about a time you strongly disagreed with your manager. What did you do to convince him or her that you were right? What ultimately happened?
17. Tell me about the best and worst bosses you’ve ever had, specifically, in your career. What was the difference?
18. What's one part of your previous company's culture that you hope to bring to your next one? What one part do you hope to not find?

QUESTIONS ON LEARNING FROM MISTAKES:

19. When was the last time you changed your mind about something important?
20. What's the most important thing you've learned from a peer and how have you used that lesson in your day-to-day life?
21. Tell me about a time you really screwed something up. How did you handle it and how did you address the mistake?
22. Tell me about a time you made a mistake or failed at something. What did you learn from this experience? Can you give me two other examples?
23. When have you felt the lowest in your career? Did you realize how you felt in the moment? How did you respond?

QUESTIONS THAT SURFACE SELF-AWARENESS:

24. What’s one misconception your coworkers have about you?
25. What are you better at than most anyone else? What’s your superpower and how will you leverage that to make an impact at this company?
26. If I were to go and speak to people who don't think very highly of you, what would they say?

QUESTIONS TO FIND OUT HOW THEY RESPOND TO FEEDBACK

27. What’s one critical piece of feedback you’ve received that was really difficult to hear? Why was it difficult and what did you do with that information? What did you learn about yourself?
28. Find a way to give the candidate feedback in the interview.
29. What was the last thing you nerded out on?

QUESTIONS THAT PUT PASSION FRONT AND CENTER:

30. What are some things outside of work that you’re irrationally passionate about?
31. What’s the first job you had, that's not on your resume, and what did you learn from that experience?

QUESTIONS THAT THROW A CURVEBALL:

32. Why shouldn't we hire you?
33. What should our team be doing differently that could yield 10x improvement?
34. Teach me something.

QUESTIONS THAT DIG INTO HOW THEY THINK:

35. If you were to take over as CEO of your current company tomorrow, and had to increase your company's current rate of growth, what three areas you would invest in?
36. How would you build a product for people who are looking for an apartment?
37. What are 10 ways to speed up Domino’s pizza delivery?

QUESTIONS THAT FLIP THE SCRIPT:

38. What can I tell you about working here?
39. If you were in my shoes, what attributes would you look for in hiring for this role?
40. What have I not asked you that I should have?