Addressing the central dilemma established firms face -- how to continue to harvest past success while driving the organization, its people and its processes, toward future opportunities -- this acclaimed book presents a cogent strategy for generating future growth from new lines of business.
Clay Christensen published The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1997, explaining in brilliant detail why established enterprises struggle when faced with category disruption. A decade later, however, despite this understanding, they were faring no better. That’s what led me to write Escape Velocity.
The subtitle tells the whole story: Free your company’s future from the pull of the past. As long as categories are not being disrupted, the past is a good predictor of the future, and inertial momentum plays to the established enterprise’s strengths. But when categories do get disrupted, there is a tectonic shift in the marketplace, and every enterprise needs to reorient to the new power dynamics. Unfortunately, while scaled businesses typically have a great set of analytics for investing in and managing performance, they have little to none for investing in and managing power. That was a gap I wanted to fill.
The book draws on three decades of consulting in the high-tech sector. My colleagues and I had seen the rise and fall of the BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell), the minicomputers (DEC, Data General, Four Phase, Wang, NBI, Tandem, Stratus), the Unix workstations (Sun, Apollo, HP, Silicon Graphics), Local Area Networks (Novell, 3Com, Bay, Synoptics), and now we were watching the smart phone leaders getting eviscerated by Apple and Google, the hardware manufacturers getting commoditized by the hyperscalers, and all of media thrown for a loop by streaming. The churn was not doing anyone any good, with customers being stranded and investors left holding the bag.
Escape Velocity is organized around a framework called the Hierarchy of Powers. It claims there are five powers that shape the future of any enterprise when categories are disrupted. In order of priority, they are category power, company power, market segment power, offer power, and execution power. Performance metrics and tactics are excellent for managing execution power, and good for offer power, but they are weak at addressing the top three. That’s when management attention has to shift to power metrics and tactics.
The book focuses on how to invest in power, how to hold teams accountable for achieving power metrics, and how to prioritize power over performance during times of disruption. None of these are challenges for start-ups because power is the only metric that matters to them and their investors. But they pose a real challenge for publicly held companieswhose performance is scrutinized on a quarterly basis. That’s why Escape Velocity is still relevant today.
Escape Velocity is a straightforward and courageous guide that illustrates how to tap into the vast power of innovation and navigate the new world with a powerful competitive edge.
His Hierarchy of Powers also is an instructive template for boards … to test the effectiveness of the Company's organization, leadership, programs, goals and metrics to drive innovation, sustain profitable growth, and escape the dead weight of yesterday's success. At Akamai, we use these tools to help us do just that.
In his latest work, Geoff delivers the practical playbook and tools to help your enterprise change trajectory, increase performance, break the ties with the status quo and achieve Escape Velocity.
We have used Crossing the Chasm extensively in our entrepreneurship courses at Stanford University for years. Escape Velocity is now the perfect equivalent of dynamic thinking and compelling lessons for established corporations seeking next-generation innovations.
Geoffrey Moore gets it. Competitors aren’t our biggest enemies, the past and the status quo are. Escape Velocity shows us how to reorient ourselves towards the future.
In his new book, Escape Velocity, Moore lays out the Hierarchy of Powers framework to help companies recognize where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and how to develop a plan based on that. It's both enlightening and common-sense. And, as we discovered at Sybase, it works.
Geoffrey Moore’s latest book resets the bar for management strategy texts. His frameworks make the dialog around power as clear and accountable as the one around performance. Think Michael Porter meets Peter Drucker. This is a game changer.
Read this book to learn how to create a company as powerful as Apple.
New globalized and virtualized business models, new social and mobile technologies, and a new generation of “born-digital” workers and consumers are reshaping industries. Geoffrey has been at the forefront of this thinking and, in Escape Velocity, provides a pragmatic framework for mature enterprises to think about these changes, escape the pull of their pasts and embrace the new future of work.
Geoffrey once again logically presents compelling business frameworks and brings them home with powerful case studies.
+
+
Crossing the Chasm 3rd edition is a must-read for entrepreneurs and marketers looking to take their high-tech products from early adoption to mainstream success. Geoffrey Moore’s classic work, updated for the digital age, provides insightful strategies for closing the gap between visionary early adopters and the more pragmatic majority. Considered a classic.
Zone to Win is a strategic playbook for businesses navigating disruptive innovation. Geoffrey Moore offers a practical framework for enterprises to achieve their greatest potential by focusing on four critical zones: the performance zone, the productivity zone, the incubation zone, and the transformation zone. A business book bestseller, this essential guide is designed to help.
Addressing the central dilemma established firms face -- how to continue to harvest past success while driving the organization, its people and its processes, toward future opportunities -- this acclaimed book presents a cogent strategy for generating future growth from new lines of business.