I thoroughly enjoyed Kieran Levis’s Winners and Losers: Creators and Casualties of the Age of the Internet, a collection of case-studies of businesses that have thrived or tanked as a result of their relationship to technology. From record companies to IBM, from Sony to Webvan, from Google to Nokia, Levis examines the clunkers and the strokes of genius (or luck) that made headlines for each firm as it coped with the ‘net’s disruptivity.
After each case-study, Levis tries to extract the principles embodied by the decisions that led to the companies’ fate. These principles contradict themselves: be big fast (Amazon); don’t get too big too fast (Webvan); do the right thing and figure out the business later (Google); change fast (the record companies); content is king (BSkyB); content is a boat-anchor (Sony); and so on.
The takeaway for me was that different circumstances demand different strategic responses (duh), and by getting all this meaty context about what worked and for whom, I felt better equipped to make decisions about my own strategies in the future.
Winners and Losers: Creators and Casualties of the Age of the Internet (UK)
Winners and Losers: Creators and Casualties of the Age of the Internet (US)