p14-15 the bad news is that Bon Jovi, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, is "battling the pirates," which makes it seem that they view fans(the only people who are busy trying to get free copies of their music) as the enemy.
p19 The future is about work that's really and truly hard, not just time-consuming. it's about the kind of work that requires us to push ourselves, not just punch the clock. Hard work is where our future job security, our financial profit, and our future joy lie.
p43 1. Cog labor is a lowest-common-denominator activity.
2. If cog labor gets expensive, companies now automate it.
3 If a company can't afford to automate, they move the work somewhere where it's cheaper.
4.if the competition moves, companies figure out how to measure and semiautomate their cog labor to make it cheaper still.
p69 Or consider the architect who designs just a few major buildings a year. Obviously he has to dig deep to do work of a high enough quality to earn these comissions. But by not cluttering his life and his reputation with a string of low-budget, boring projects, he actually increases his chances of getting great projects in the future.
How many newly minted colledge grads take the first job that's "good enogh"? A good-enough job gets you busy right away, but it also puts you on a apath to a lifetime of good-enough jobs. Investing(not "spending")a month or a year in high-profile internship could change your career forever.
p73 1. Finding, hiring, and managing supergreat people
2. Embracing change and moving quickly
3. Understanding and excelling at business develpment and at making deals with other companies.
4. Prioritization takes in a job that change every day.
5. Selling-to people to companeis, and markets.
p180 the first thing to remember is that you can't be Purple at the last minute. You need to be Purple before you start looking for a job. That means doing a remarkable job at work (hence the amazing referrals you'll get for internal jobs) and which clients(hence the unslicited job offers). peopel who are remarkable in the way they deal with cutomers and lients and co-workers rarly find them salves unempreloyed.
p188 there is no correlation at all between success and hours worked. people who run huge corporations, superpower governments, and insanely profitable, tiny proprietorships anre all working fewer hours than you are. it's time to stop the madness and reset your internal clock.
p190 you don't make stuff. you make decisions.and the thing about making decisions is that you don't make better decisions when you work longer hours. you don't write better code when you work longer hours. you don't create better business development deals, make better sales pitches or invent cooler interfaces when you work longer hours eigher.
p191. Take a look at the future. When you write your company's hitory tow years from now, which decisions will have really mattered where were the key moments that led you to create such a success?
That's what you should spend your time on. Getting those decisions right is far more important then answering your 103rd e-mail or hacking that last piece of code.
p199 1. make sure that it's really a rift -- and not just a hiccup. A rift is characterized by fundamental change in one of the basic rules of the game. you can usually expand the first rip in the fabric by dicussing it in hypothentical terms: what if the transaction cost of auction became zero?" or "What if everyone had a television?"
2. Answer every o bjection with "why?" and repeat that "why?" until you get to the core of your hesitation. THen you'llknow what's really causing the discomfort, and you'll be able to deal with it.
3. Maybe-proof your organization when it comes to rifts. Require someone, anyone, in the company to sign a piece of paper that says, " I heard about this rigt from so-and-do, but we're not going to do anything about it, and htere's why." Allow people not to sign the paper, but require those people to give the unsigned sheet to their boss, there by passing the buck -- all the way to the president of the company, if necessary. It will only take about a week for the president to become acutely aware of the opportunities that the comany is not taking advantage of..
p201. Market leaders make up the rules. They establish the systems and the covenants and the bench marks that a market plays by. and yes, a market leader can be a church, a political party, or a nonprofit.
If you play be those rules, you will almost cerainly lose.
After all, that's why market leaders make rules. they establish a game
that they can win, over and over again, against smaller or newer
companies.
p208 so how do you deal with the shortage of scarcity?
When, the worst strategy is whining---about copyright laws and fair trade and how hard you've worked to get to where you are. Whining is rarely a successful response to anything. Instead, start by acknowledging that most of the profit from your business is going to disappear soon. Unless you have a significant cost advantatge(like amazon or wal-mart), someone with nothing to lose is going to be albe to offer a similar product for less money.
so what's scarece now? respect. hoensty. good judgement. Long term relationships that lead to trust. None of theres things guarantee loyalty in the face of cut-rate competition, though. So to that list I'll add this: an insanely low cost structure based on outsourcing everything except your company's insight into what your customers really want to buy. if the work is boring, let someone else do it faster and cheaper than you ever could. If your products are boring, kill them before your cpmpetition does.
Ultimately, whats's scares is that kind of courage--which is exactly whta you can bring to the market.
p208 If it's not money or brilliant programming , that will characterize the success of tomorrow's Internet?
1. Relentless execution This is far and away the winner. Persistence and focus and consistency. We saw how this worked for Amazon and we saw how getting distracted hurt AOL and others. It's fa more important today, because markets at rest tend to stay at rest. Changing the market is hard.
2. Resistance to compromise Because you can do so much so fast nowadays, and because it's easy for nonexperts to chime in, the temptation is to go for the middle, to compromise, to be all things. it's that Purple Cow thing again...
3. What you don't do This is al little bit like #2. Go take a look at an Amazon page. From these you can do a Web search, search inside the book, order it new, order it used, and on and on and on. The temptations is to do everything you can do(and it might work for amazon, but it's probably not going to work for you.) The very best new Net companeies understand in their heart and soul what thy woun't do.
4. Desire to be three steps ahead One step ahead is easy, but one step isn't enough. If you're only one step ahead, you'll get creamed before you launch. Two steps ahead is tempting. Two steps means that everyone understands what yoou're up to when you pitch it to them. Two steps means that you can get funding in no time. But two step is a problem, because the really smart guys are three steps ahead. They' re the groundbreakers and the pathfinders. They're the ones inventing the next generation. It's hader to sell, harder to build, and harder to get your mother-in-lawto undedrstand, but it's what truly worth building.
5. Doin something worth doing Hey, nobody is going to switch to your service because you worked hard on it. Being a little better is worthless.
6. Connecting people to people Over and over again, connecting people with one another is what lasts online. Some folks thought it was about technology, but it's not.
7. Monetizing from the first moment Google without AdWords is worthless. So Adwords are build into the experience. Google isn't saying, "Hey, we have to do this because otherewise we'll go out of buysiness," they're syaing "this acutally makes the service better." Given how cheap most online services are to build and run, you can't charge moneyif the only reason you're charging is to make a profit. Charging adds friction and selectivity. If those two elements are a drag on your service, you will fail. Hotmail's founders missed this point. Banner ads made Hotmail worse, not better, and because they didn't build useful ads into hte service from the start, they never could.
8. not depending on a big partner Sure it would be great if you could be on Yahoo!'s home page every day, or buld into Blogger or featured on Fox every night, but it would be great if you won the lottery, too. THat's a wish, not a plan.
9. Ignoring the pundits Including me. If I'm so smart, why don't I go build your business?
10. Keeping promises Even thought the net is here and it's real, that doesn't mean that the laws of business have been suspended forever. And the words "keeping promises" capture the best of what we've leaned over the past four hundred years. Do what you say you're going to do and the rest is a lot easier.
p212 what chance is there that your totally average resume, describing a totally average academic and work career is going to get you most jobs? "Hey Bill! check out this average guy with an average academic background and really exceptionally average work experience! Maybe he's cheap!"
p221 Soy Luck club
Pay $40 or so and you get breakfast everyday for a month. "grab and go," it's called.
p227 Big companies are big companies because they're very good at doing yersterday's business. They can make (and sell) Their stuff faster and cheaper than the competition because they've gotten good at making and selling their existing products.
p305 my blog doesn't have comments. thoght............so if you've got something you want to say about one of my ideas, go ahead and track back ti and put it on your blog.
