Leap: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied

by Howard Yu

Every business faces the existential threat of competitors producing cheaper copies. Even patent filings, market dominance and financial resources can't shield them from copycats. So what can we do--and, what can we learn from companies that have endured and even prospered for centuries despite copycat competition?  

In a book of narrative history and practical strategy, IMD professor of management and innovation Howard Yu shows that succeeding in today's marketplace is no longer just a matter of mastering copycat tactics, companies also need to leap across knowledge disciplines, and to reimagine how a product is made or a service is delivered. This proven tactic can protect a company from being overtaken by new (and often foreign) copycat competitors.    

Using riveting case studies of successful leaps and tragic falls, Yu illustrates five principles to success that span a wide range of industries, countries, and eras. Learn about how P&G in the 19th century made the leap from handcrafted soaps and candles to mass production of its signature brand Ivory, leaped into the new fields of consumer psychology and advertising, then leaped again, at the risk of cannibalizing its core product, into synthetic detergents and won with Tide in 1946. Learn about how Novartis and other pharma pioneers stayed ahead by making leaps from chemistry to microbiology to genomics in drug discovery; and how forward-thinking companies, including China's largest social media app--WeChat, Tokyo-based Internet service provider Recruit Holdings, and Illinois-headquartered John Deere are leaping ahead by leveraging the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity, the inexorable rise of intelligent machines, and the rising importance of managerial creativity.    

Outlasting competition is difficult; doing so over decades or a century is nearly impossible--unless one leaps. Ultimately, Leap is a manifesto for how pioneering companies can endure and prosper in a world of constant change and inevitable copycats.  

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Management, Economics

288 pages, Hardcover

Published June 12, 2018

About the author

Howard Yu is the LEGO professor of management and innovation in the prestigious IMD business school in Switzerland as well as the director of its signature program, the three-week Advanced Management Program (AMP), an executive education course. In 2015, Yu was selected by Poets&Quants as one of “The World’s Top 40 Business Professors Under 40,” and in 2018 he appeared on the Thinkers50 Radar list of thirty management thinkers “most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.” He has delivered customized training programs for leading organizations including Mars, Maersk, Daimler, and Electrolux. His articles have appeared in Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. Yu received his doctoral degree from Harvard Business School. Prior to his beginning his doctorate, he worked in the banking industry in Hong Kong.

Reviews

[Boni Aditya · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE BAD:

The author had one original idea and he decided to make it into a book. He converted a very long article or a blog post into a complete book by adding relevant use cases.

The first two chapters are the best part of the book. The author places his thought coherently and in an organized manner. But what follows next can only be termed as verbal diarrhea. There is no specific form or an order, ideas are all jumbled up and filled with stories about companies who have pulled through used as evidence for Leaping into adjacent industries and sectors.

The author also contradicts his own statements, he claims that patents, competitive advantages, licences etc... only give a fleeting advantages. But, he also applauds the platform strategy used by various companies provided as examples. He also has not done complete and proper research, i.e. peer research or try to understand similar stuff written by other authors. So he did not know about the Innovation Matrix and that he is talking about disruptive innovation.


The author keeps going around in circles talking about the same damn thing over and over again.

The author presented leaping as a strategy to stay ahead of the competitive pressures.

THE GOOD:
The author tackles "GOOD TO GREAT", he talks about the experts and pundits, who talk about great companies without actually venturing into them. He talks about these statisticians that are so fond of processing huge sets of data and claiming that they have understood something without ever talking to the people running the company. Believe that quantitative and numbers give the complete picture of everything.

This reminds me of a take about a guy fishing with a stick, when asked why he was doing it, he replied that he only had a stick. Similar to fishing with a stick, the quantitative are used to tackle something that is inherently qualitative i.e. company and its longetivity does not depend on a single or a combination of factors, it actually depends on millions of decisions taken by hundreds of managers across the company, all of which are qualitative. To assume that it can be captured by numbers, is only hubris.

THE UGLY:
At some point while reading the book, I cringed. I could not wait for it to be over. It was the same thing over and over again. The stories were never ending, and there is no consistent flow, one story flows into another in an unending rambling, after a while you forget about what the author is trying to convey with this story that keeps running for pages. Like the title of the book suggests, the author keeps leaping from one topic to the next, from one company to the next and one use case to the next. While trying to explain a very simple concept of Knowledge funnel and how companies can survive when they keep leaping from one discipline to the next. Beyond that there is no particular value add from this book. It made me very anxious making me read a few pages twice or thrice to understand If I was missing something very important, alas I could not find anything worth noting for pages at a time.

After two chapters it boils down to name calling and rambling about use cases. The entire book has less than 10 concepts, which are original. Thus you end up reading 300 odd pages for may be seven or eight concepts. Which are told and retold using various examples. The knowledge density is extremely low for this book and so is the value add.

The author should definitely consider ordering the concepts to form a coherent whole. There is a lot of confusion while reading the book. The stories are numerous some of the are huge, others are small, others only range a few lines. Name dropping is rampant.

He goes from talking about lean to biotech to tractors to alexander osterwaldars unique book strategy. To make a simple point about how technology becomes accessible to the masses he usurps huge chunks of pages. To talk about crowd innovation he eats away so much space which is definitely not requried. Spigot and Innocentive are all well known and people have already understood how normal everyday people are replacing high paid experts and then to explain how the standardized knowledge is then absorbed by artificial intelligence, machine learning, rise of 5g and uber connectivity is going to be the final game changer and how all companies have to absorb this is stressed.

The way he compares Google with Amazon to differentiate between skunk works and companies that are built with quick returns versus companies that have leap included in their DNA.

The constant these of the book is "LOSING FOREST FOR THE TREES", the authors keeps talking about random stuff, in a round about manner, while the reader forgets about why all of this is being discussed in the first place.

I found the book extremely disorienting and lost my peace while reading it.

The author has no sympathy for the readers, he wrote the book without the end user in his mind.


Only the FIRST PART OF THE BOOK IS AWESOME

Books:

Good to great

The world is flat

The power of habit by Charles duhigg

Brotherhood

Thinking fast and slow

Only the paranoid survive





Piedmont vs Basel



Disparity explanation:

Hitech

Nature of knowledge - risky research

Window of opportunity is closed for late comers.

Complex and unpredictable problems

Too high barriers of entry for late comers to overcome.



Quality variance of automobile industry - toyata and honda used jit and lean manufacturing to overcome this.



P1: reassess a firm's foundational or core knowledge and it's maturity



P2 : acquire and cultivate new knowledge disciplines



P3: leverage seismic shifts



P4: experiment to gain evidence



P5: dive deep into execution



Ceo deep dive



Steinway vs yamana action plan:

1. Availability of the product - instant delivery

2. Pricing - premium

3. Look better in detail - side by side comparison

4. Not placed on sales floors along side Yamaha

5. Assemble as much info on yamaha as possible.



The inconvenient stranger.



Three steps of knowledge funnel

Crafts manship -> mass production by technicians following standard procedures -> automation.



Proximate causes vs ultimate causes

Know how -> Knowledge codification -> standardization and precision manufacturing (automation)



Industry knowledge maturity favours late comers vs early pioneers



Shift from product to process.





Competitive myopia



Competitive advantage is only transient.



Marginal thinking - ignoring sunk and fixed costs



Unwilling ness to cannibalize current sales

Tendency to Leverage what exists



Jim Collins good to great







Textile industry:

Francis cabott lull - commercial espionage.



Upgrading 













Hard won progress





PART-2



Good to great - failure



Deliberate strategy vs emergent strategy



Gene recombinant tech - Genentech



Part 3



Ceo deep dive

[Pavel Annenkov · Rating 4 out of 5]

О чем книга в целом.
Книга из серии "умный преподаватель хорошо пересказывает и организовывает чужие мысли".
Большинство компаний не живут долго, потому что не смогли сделать скачок в новую технологическую реальность. В первой части книги автор рассказывает, какие крупные и известные компании смогли сохранить свой бизнес и перейти на новые уровни развития, а у кого не получилось и почему. Во второй части мы получаем видение того, что будет происходить в будущем и инструменты для организации качественного скачка в новые прибыльные рынки.

В книге много отсылок к важным книгам и статьям, которые освежил в памяти. Ставлю четверку за хороший разбор того, как оценивать своевременность вывода продукта на рынок. Опять же мысль не самого автора, но он отсылает к детальной статье в HBR "Right Tech, Wrong Time". Прочтение одной этой статьи окупило всё вложение времени в книгу. Так бывает)

- Сейчас в мировом бизнесе всё настолько взаимосвязано, что будущее чаще всего наступает быстрее, чем мы предполагаем.

- Все примерно понимают какие новые технологии будут менять рынок в будущем. Здесь главный вопрос, не что будет меняться, а когда начнутся изменения и придет время выхода на новый рынок с нашим продуктом. Важнее не ЧТО делать, а КОГДА делать.

- Примеры Стива Джобса, Джефа Безоса и других СЕО показывают, что предприниматель должен вникать в ключевые инновационные процессы в компании и сам участвовать в их внедрении. Это нужно для скорости принятия ответственных решений. Наемник этого никогда делать не будет и не сможет.

Вообще, работа Говарда Ю хорошо дополняет книгу Гроува "Выживают только параноики».

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extension of the Innovator’s Dilemma. Big businesses are eaten alive because they cannot innovate, and that is because they are not willingness to cannibalize their own existing product, unlike their small and new competitors. The solution? Cannibalize your own product just like P&G, and you are on your way to eternal competitive advantage. Yu calls it the ‘Deep Dive’.

Later Yu introduced using rules and AI to replace expert knowledge for better outcome. However, humans are absolutely required to identify the problem and use intuition to frame the questions, on top of actually interacting with clients.

The last part consists of the importance of the CEO actually getting involved in innovation, because innovation always costs resources and the CEO must guarantee to the team assigned for the innovation that he has its back. Otherwise the innovation will just be shot down.

I rather enjoy this book with its many examples, just that I found it a bit repetitive and not well structured. A solid 4 stars.

[Karren Hodgkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I didn’t want to skip a thought. I really appreciated the depth of the case studies as they provided me with so many examples; from different periods of time, different geographic locations and different industries in different environments. I appreciated the skill with which Mr Yu crafted his perspective, based on in-depth research, and linked it to the case studies. He created tension in some places and then released it, by detailing what today’s leaders need to do in order not to sink into obscurity. The read was challenging and inspiring.

He outlines how, "These principles both explain and predict how companies can prosper when labour, information and money move easily, cheaply and almost instantaneously.” and argues, “ The only way to prosper under these conditions over long periods is to leap.”

Leaping requires we move out of our comfort zones, it requires that we get our heads around the fact that what we will be doing in the future is going to look very different to what we are doing now, and that leaders of organisations have very specific, very active roles in driving this change. “They have to personally intervene at critical junctures, wielding the power to overcome specific barriers.” It requires leaders to do, not just think.

Mr Hu is clear that this is the way to stay ahead of copycats, to “forge ahead’ rather than ‘refining what has already been.” We must ‘leverage the seismic shifts”

There are some hard truths for the reader to swallow, including detailed accounts of where world-class businesses have tripped and fallen, eg: assuming the present health of your company will continue indefinitely, or, that what made us successful in our early days will guide us to create the capabilities we will need going forward.

He also quotes research from experts such as Professor Amar Bhide, ‘Most of the startups failed, as expected, but an overwhelming 93% of those that succeed had to abandon their original strategies because they were proven unviable. ...successful startups almost always have to do something different than what they promised their investors.”

So we need to learn from failures and recognise the importance of doing something different, significantly different, from where we start (or where we are right now) is it is more than likely going to be the key to our future success

In the end, I did feel upbeat and that I can do this, I can leap! No wait, let me rephrase that; to succeed for any length of time, in a turbulent business environment, I WILL HAVE to leap. And it’s my ’role, the leadership role, to make it happen.

With thanks to Perseus Books, the author and NetGalley for my free copy to review.

[Dmitry · Rating 1 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Это удивительно, что автор, будучи профессором по стратегическому менеджменту и инновациям, написал такую пустую книгу. Всё же подобный тип книг или, лучше сказать, текстов, часто пишутся журналистами. В этой книге профессор практически ничего не предложил, за исключением таких очевидных вещей как важность инноваций. Сама книга также выглядит (построена) не как книга написанная профессором бизнес-школы, а как типичная журналистская работа.

Во-первых, книга состоит из одних лишь примеров. Именно это меня удивило больше всего, учитывая, что автор – профессор. В книге мы встречаем долгое и муторное описание истории подъёма компании P&G, в частности знаменитый кейс мыла Ivory, который внёс существенный вклад в становление компании P&G. Об этой истории пишут очень часто как пример удачного брендинга. Однако это очень общеизвестная история, которая написана настолько подробно, что возникает ощущение, что это сделано специально для увеличения объёма книги. Далее такая же долгая и подробная история, но уже о лекарстве связанным с раком, а также история, связанная с производством пианино Yamaha. Все истории объединяет то, что они выиграли конкурентную гонку и стали знаменитыми. Однако проблема здесь в том, что невозможно просто взять и в точности скопировать успешную стратегию, переложив её на другую компанию. В мире существовало множество продуктов, которые не достигли успеха на рынке, несмотря на то, что продукт был инновационным. Другими словами, то, что сработало в одном случаи, может не сработать в другом. Поэтому такие книги, т.е. в которых просто пересказываются успешные бизнес истории/стратегии, довольно бессмысленные для практического применения. Они не имеют смысла не потому, что они не могут стать успешными, а потому, что каждая бизнес ситуация по своему уникальна и поэтому стратегия должна вырабатываться исходя из конкретной ситуации, а не из того, что эта стратегия когда-то помогла какой-то компании в прошлом. Подобные тексты, т.е. тексты описывающие успех той или иной компании, часто публикуются в профильных журналах, ибо являются хорошим примером лёгкого и развлекательного текста. Однако когда пишется книга по бизнесу, читатель ожидает более целостного и практического подхода, а не просто пересказ истории бизнес успеха.

Во-вторых, там, где автор комментирует кейсы и предлагает своё видение успешной бизнес-стратегии, всё сводится к крайне очевидным вещам. Например, автор пишет, что конкурентное преимущество не является постоянной величиной и компания должна осуществлять политику осуществления подрывных инноваций (Disruptive innovation) о которых была написана книга «Дилемма инноватора» (The Innovator’s Dilemma). Проблема не в том, что я не согласен с этим, а в том, что это базовая информация, о которой можно прочесть в любом учебнике по маркетингу и стратегическому менеджменту. Другими словами, люди которые занимаются бизнесом (CEO, руководители малых и средних предприятий, маркетологи и пр.) знают об этом по определению. Это базовая информация.

В-третьих, идея о том, что инновационный товар может быть не готов для текущего рынка, для текущего уровня развития технологий в мире, также является базовой информацией для любого, кто работает в бизнесе на руководящих позициях. И то, что Стив Джобс правильно подгадал момент для презентации своего iPod, не является новостью ни для кого. Однако я бы обратил внимание также и на то, что дизайн iPod был идеальным. Презентация и последующее маркетинговое продвижение, также было выполнено компанией Apple идеально. Так что успех iPod базируется не только на правильно выбранном моменте, но и на множестве других факторах, о которых автор данной книги ничего не сказал.

В заключении стоит отметить, что все советы автора сводятся к тому, чтобы компания была инновационной, клиентоориентированной и имела самые низкие издержки. Это – Капитан Очевидность! Проблема только в том, что все копании пытаются реализовать все три направления, но лишь нескольким сопутствует успех в виде повышения чистой прибыли. К примеру, можно вложить очень много денег в инновации, но при этом не пользоваться спросом у покупателей. Почему? А им не нужен более продвинутый товар. Но это не означает что инновации бессмыслены. Это лишь значит, что к каждой ситуации (компании) нужен индивидуальный подход. Многие компании успешны, хотя не являются особо клиентоориентированными или инновационными. Всё решает индивидуальный подход и ситуация на рынке.

It is surprising that the author, being a professor of strategic management and innovation, has written such an empty book. However, these types of books or, better to say, texts are often written by journalists. In this book, the professor offered almost nothing except for the obvious things like the importance of innovation. The book itself also looks (is constructed) not like a book written by a business school professor but like a typical journalistic work.

Firstly, the book consists of just examples. It's what surprised me the most, given that the author is a professor. In the book, we come across a long and tortuous description of the history of the rise of P&G, in particular the famous Ivory soap case, which contributed significantly to the formation of P&G. This story is often written about as an example of successful branding. However, this is a very well-known story, which is written in such detail that it feels like it was done on purpose to increase the length of the book. Then, there is an equally long and detailed story about a medicine for cancer (sort of) and a story about Yamaha's piano production. What all the stories have in common is that they won a competitive race and became famous. However, the problem here is that you can't just copy a successful strategy and transfer it to another company. There have been many products in the world that have failed in the market, even though the product was innovative. In other words, what worked in one case may not work in another. Therefore, such books, i.e., which simply retell successful business stories/strategies, are rather meaningless for practical application. They do not make sense not because they cannot become successful but because every business situation is unique and, therefore, a strategy should be developed based on the specific situation, not on the fact that this strategy has helped some companies in the past. Such texts, i.e., texts describing the success of this or that company, are often published in trade magazines because they are a good example of a light and entertaining text. However, when writing a business book, the reader expects a more holistic and practical approach, not just a retelling of a business success story.

Secondly, when the author comments on cases and offers his vision of a successful business strategy, everything comes down to very obvious things. For example, the author writes that competitive advantage is not a permanent value and the company should implement a policy of disruptive innovation, about which the book "The Innovator's Dilemma" was written. The problem is not that I don't agree with it, but that this is basic information that you can read about in any marketing and strategic management textbook. In other words, people who are in business (CEOs, SMEs, marketers, etc.) know this by definition. It is basic information.

Thirdly, the idea that an innovative product may not be ready for the current market, for the current level of technology in the world, is also basic information for anyone working in business in a senior position. And the fact that Steve Jobs got the timing right for the launch of his iPod is not news to anyone. However, I would also point out that the design of the iPod was perfect. The presentation and subsequent marketing promotion were also perfectly executed by Apple. So, the success of the iPod is based not only on the right timing but also on many other factors that the author of this book did not mention.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that all of the author's advice boils down to ensuring that the company is innovative, customer-centric, and has the lowest costs. It is Captain Obvious! The only problem is that all companies try to realize all three, but only a few succeed in increasing net profit. For example, it is possible to invest a lot of money in innovation and still not be in demand by customers. Why? Because they don't want a more advanced product. But this does not mean that innovation is pointless. It just means that each situation (company) needs an individual approach. Many companies are successful, although they are not particularly customer-orientated or innovative. It's all down to the individual approach and the market situation.

[Daiya Hashimoto · Rating 4 out of 5]

An up-and coming professor of IMD, Howard Yu, who was chosen as one of "Best 40 Under 40 professors" and got various academic awards, introduces his "Leap Theory", which explains how successful companies can thrive in a world where everything can be copied.

As he examines many Japanese companies' cases, it is very interesting for Japanese readers. The first company as a successful adopter of a copycat strategy is a Japanese music instrument manufacturer, Yamaha. It copied Steinway’s piano manufacturing. As supported by growing domestic piano demand, Yamaha was able to make high quality pianos, contributing them to top universities such as Stanford and Harvard music halls and providing them to top artists for free. Once media covered the fact that there was Yamaha's logo on famous artists' instruments on stages, the situation started changing. Today, although Steinway still manages to keep its top brand image, it is a mediocre company financially struggling in terms of the scale and market share, compared with the giant Yamaha, presently the top maker.

Steinway is the company once thrived with virtuosic craftsmanship, while Yamaha is the one that evolved its core competence from craftsmanship to mass production to automation. Howard calls that evolutionary process a "knowledge funnel".

Yamaha's first knowledge funnel
Craftsmanship -> Mass Production -> Automation

When automation is completed, the growth in the funnel ends, if a company continues to stay within the same funnel, the company's life span is short. The professor explains that the secret to companies’ long success is their leaps from one knowledge funnel to another nonlinearly.

He introduces P&G as the longest-thriving companies for over 150 years. On its foundation, P&G was a small plant which made simple white soap. It grew in the first knowledge funnel from craftsmanship to mass production to automation. However, as other competitors also could copy the same strategy, at some point it might have been caught up. So, P&G first leap was to change its knowledge principle from manufacturing engineering to advertising and marketing. As everyone could make similar soap, brand image became a key to their success.

Then, marketing competition became fierce. While P&G was highly praised as the most tactful advertiser incorporating psychology, it has been fervently investing in R&D and evolves the core knowledge principle again. Today's P&G is the company which thrives based on Biotechnology producing technologically inimitable highly efficient detergents.

P&G leaps:
Manufacturing Engineering -> Psychology of Marketing & Advertising -> Biotechnology

It bravely jumped three nonlinear leaps.

The book deals with many cases of successful companies which follow the leap theory, tens of famous companies from West to East, including Japanese Recruit.

How can large companies drastically change their core strategy when they still enjoy their present prosperity? Howard Yu's answer is "The CEO DEEP DIVE", top management level decision and strong commitment on implementation.

I think All large Japanese companies' managements, who see only growth within one knowledge funnel, should read this book immediately.

[coolwind · Rating 3 out of 5]

Accept being bold in decision to take risk, there is nothing new comparing to other innovation books.

[Audrey]

I was born to read this book.

[Greg Hopper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started strong with a retrospective approach; wasn't as strong on recommendations on what companies should do in the future. Exhaustively researched, if the number of footnotes is any indication.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book reads like an undergraduate research paper, in which it was clear the student didn't know what to write the paper on, so they spent the whole time researching everything. Three days before the assignment was due, they picked the topic they had the most information on and summarized their research, but they didn't want to let all the other research they did to go to waste, so they try to cram it in whenever they spot an opportunity. In their haste, they forgot to analyse why the information they have presented is important, but they did make some attempts to integrate all the information together. I'd give the paper a 60%.

However, considering that the author of this paper is a FREAKING professor, I'd give this paper 0%.

But like, real talk. This book was mostly fluff.

Each chapter consisted of long-winded case studies that contained irrelevant historical facts that do not help readers understand the thesis of the chapter. At the end of the story, the author then finally presented the purpose of the story and its relevance to business. Even at that point, the presented concept remains underarticulated, in that the author doesn’t outright state what the concept is. Instead, he restated what the people in the case study did (i.e., they leaped!), and then explained what would happen if they didn’t apply the concept (i.e., no leap = no monies). What remained lacking is an explanation of the decision making processes that is not accessible through a simple google search, such as when to apply a concept (i.e., when should a leap be made vs sticking to my guns?), which concept to use (i.e., should I outsource vs inhouse), or how (i.e., how do I assess which area to leap to?). These pieces of information are condensed from years of experience or careful observation, and I assume that is what most readers are hoping to cultivate by reading this book, but it’s completely missing!

The only possible explanation that I can come up with for the shit-tier analysis from a professor is that this book may serve as a funnel for the author’s (probably very expensive) business executive seminars. Every time I feel like the author is finally going into depth on some concepts (not the story), the chapter ends. I mean, why attend his seminars if you can get all that knowledge for the price of a book?

Goddamn, I want the x hours I spent reading this book of my life back.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept of Leap is really intriguing. Essentially, if you assume that any advantage your organization has in the short term will absolutely be copied (and improved upon!) by competitors, how do you stay ahead of the pack generation over generation? How have Novartis and P&G been leaders in their fields for over 100 years?

The book is broken into two parts, one great, one not.

"Part 1 shows us the power of history, which acts as a prism to help us understand the past so we may leap into new knowledge disciplines. Part 2 takes to the future to pinpoints the two intertwining trends that are propelling all companies into the twenty-first century: the inexorable rise of intelligent machines and the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity." p.180.

Part 1 I found super interesting to read.

Part 2, unfortunately, rapidly degraded into the most generic of books about "innovation" in an attempt to figure out what the next "Leaps" are. AI!! Platforms!! Crowdsourcing!! Design Thinking!! Lean!! Steve Jobs quotes!! I mean, there's a chapter entitled "Leveraging Managerial Creativity: From Big Data to Human Interest." All kinds of things that caused me to do major eyerolls. At least they didn't mention blockchain!

I started highlighting sections in Part 2 not because they were interesting, but based on how badly I rolled my eyes at them.

Here's an eye-roller for you: "So, what must executives do in the age of smart machines? The key is to automate as many routine cognitive tasks as possible. Free your people up from white-collar drudgery so as to leverage their fundamental human advantage, to solve problems of the next frontier creatively."

Here's another: "Understanding the past is helpful only if doing so informs decision making about the future. We must therefore ask, "How do we spot the next frontier? Where will the rules of competition be rewritten next?" Three leverage points shape the answer: the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity, the inexorable rise of intelligent machines, and the changing role of human work." p.210.

Ultimately I'm giving this 3 stars instead of 2 because Part 1 was so interesting. If they had just cut it there it would have been overall much stronger.

[Max Lapin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Почему Steinway целый век был лидирующим производителем роялей, но проиграл Ямахе за десяток лет? Почему P&G решили сами сделать так, чтобы своим же стиральным порошком Tide каннибализировать мыло Ivory? Почему существует проклятие первопроходца, которого раз за разом съедают конкуренты-последователи?

Почему Англия потеряла текстильное лидерство Америке? Как Америка проиграла доминирующую роль на рынке хлопковых тканей в Китае? Почему раз за разом не удается удерживаться на первом месте? В чем секрет тех компаний, которые остаются на пике десятилетиями, не поддаваясь коррозии, не разрушаясь, не проигрывая конкуренции.

Полная рецензия здесь: https://maxlapin.com/2019/10/04/b227/

[Book Chui · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good blend of historical and modern anecdotes that illustrates the points of the book. This is, perhaps, the simplest way to know if you have a good book- effortless to read, follow and recall. Almost "friction-less" reading, which explains why I read it nearly cover-to-cover. Not the most optimal way to read but very enjoyable. One a side note, the cover is horrendous and needs the kiss of a frog to bring out the real prince of content. :)

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book made insightful recommendations in the end on how companies should cope up.

1. Focus on augmenting machine learning - If computers and humans work hand in hand, tactics from computers and strategies (big picture) from human, it is going to beat and supercomputer.
2. Cannibalize the short term gain for long term success
3. Innovate or die.

Citing historical data on how textile manufacturing evolved and where it is now makes a lot of sense.

[Kelly Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a fantastic read. An extremely insightful look into how some companies can scale over decades and how some companies - even those at the top of their game - lose out to latecomers. Well written, well researched and full of information you can apply to your own work.

[Denis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting examples of corporate successes, motivating to make some changes or at least to observe and be attentive to them

[Ramil Babayev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed every sentence of the book, motivated to LEAP, thanks Howard! I have also had a chance to attend Howard's class, unforgettable experience.

[Yong · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.strategy-business.com/art...

[Werner Swiegers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know what to expect from the book at first.
It reads almost like a history book, of lessons of the past or good case studies. It's as broad on the topic matter as I've seen which is good on the one end, but it also makes hard to adopt practically as the book is an almost super-high level strategy on the other end.

The book did change my view of things, and for that, I would recommend it to anyone who likes business-type books.