Bestselling author Geoffrey Moore shows companies how to rise to the challenge of natural selection—and master their own evolution

Geoffrey Moore is one of the most respected and bestselling names in business books. In his widely quoted Crossing the Chasm, he identified and addressed the greatest challenge facing new ventures. Now he’s back with a book for established businesses that need to learn how to adapt—or suffer the slow declines into marginalized performance that have characterized so many Fortune 500 icons in recent years.

Deregulation, globalization, and e-commerce are exerting unprecedented pressures on company profits. In this new economic ecosystem, companies must dramatically differentiate from their direct competitors—or risk declining performance and eventual extinction. But how do companies choose the right innovation strategy? Or overcome internal inertia that resists the kind of radical commitments needed to truly set the company’s offers apart?

Illustrating his arguments with more than one hundred examples and a full-length case study based on his unprecedented access to Cisco Systems, Moore shows businesses how to meet today’s Darwinian challenges, whether they’re producing commodity products or customized services. For companies whose competitive differentiation to the marketplace is still effective, he demonstrates how innovations in execution can help boost productivity, whether a company is competing in a growth market, a mature market, or even a declining market. For companies in danger of succumbing to competitive pressures, he shows how to overcome inertia by engaging the entire corporate community in an unceasing commitment to innovate and evolve.

For any business competing in today’s eat-or-be-eaten economic jungle, this groundbreaking guide shows not only how to survive, but also thrive.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great topic but difficult to read.
Comment: Ever see a book in the bookstore that catches your attention and you realize it was a best-seller sometime in the past? You realize you never picked it up to read it and decide that you should?

That's what happened when I ran across this book.

I heard about this book when it was released in 2005 and always meant to read it...but just never did. Whilst perusing the local Half-Price Books, I decided I'd pick it up and read it...because I'm a book nerd, there is a dinosaur on the cover and I saw what I thought were fractals in the book! :)

I got the book home and started reading...and I made it to page xii in the preface to the paperback edition before realizing I may have made a mistake buying this book. What happened?

I read this passage:

"The key message is simple. In order to achieve competitive advantage in a commoditizing market, one must innovate so dramatically as to create definitive seperation between your offers and those of the low-cost commoditizers. That means selecting a vector of innovation that can set you apart and investing intensely along that vector..."

Huh? The key message is simple but the author makes the message difficult to understand.

Why didn't Mr. Moore just say: To gain competitive advantage, you need to separate yourself from your competitor by choosing an innovation path and investing in that path.

After reading this passage, I was very very skeptical about the rest of the book. Especially after this passage immediately following the above one:

"Extract resource from context to fund core."

What does that mean?

There are some great ideas in this book but those ideas are often overshadowed by verbosity (as shown above) and/or using contextual language that makes little sense outside of the context of the book.

The book does do a good job of outlining the different types of innovation (e.g., disruptive, product,platform, etc). The author does a good job of describing the process of looking at the marketplace to determine how to attack innovation. The framework that Moore lays out is very useful and intriguing and is worth studying in further detail. Again, the author does know his stuff.

That said, the book is a difficult read. If you are serious about innovation and competitive advantage, you should read this book..but be prepared to re-read many pages/sections. I found myself stopping every few paragraphs and trying to comprehend what I just read.

Is there anyone out there that has read this book and thoroughly enjoyed it? Am I being to harsh on this book? Could it be that I'm getting cranky in my old age? :)

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Darwin, or Intelligent Design?
Comment: Haven't read the book, so can't rate it, but have a comment anyway. While I'm sure Moore has delivered another excellent work, I'm a bit put off by the title. Do any of you "clear thinkers" recognize that, rather than adhering to Darwin's theory of natural selection operating on random mutation, Moore is instead advocating intelligent design as the response to competition?

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A cogent survival guide for the evolution of business
Comment: In a competitive, capitalist economy, nothing is more prized than the whiz-bang invention, the why-didn't-I-think-of-that product or service that defines a market, delights consumers and gushes profits. Yet for all the ink spilled over innovation, remarkably few businesspeople understand exactly how to mint revolutionary new products. Innovation expert Geoffrey A. Moore delves under the hood of the new economy to create this roadmap to creative thinking. Although the text at times bogs down in jargon and a dizzying degree of detail, he cites plenty of sharp real-world examples, including an inside view of Cisco Systems. We recommend this user's manual to innovation to anyone who thinks that survival is not an end goal, but just a place to get started.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A must read for technology companies
Comment: I have been an avid consumer of Geoffrey's books for many years and Dealing with Darwin provides a framework to organize an enterprise portfolio planning process. It takes the concepts in the "Discpline of Market Leaders" to a whole new level that can be used in planning and strategy execution. We use Geoff's ideas in many ways in the Stanford University Advanced Project Managment program. He is a gifted writer and thinker!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Exceeded My Expectations
Comment: This book provides a very useful model for evaluating a portfolio, identifying what's core and recommending strategies for how to balance resources between core and non-core projects and activities. Once you have identified your core projects and activities, the book also provides a framework for determining the best innovation strategy for maximum differentiation. These are extremely useful concepts and frameworks, especially for more established businesses that have diverse portfolios, are facing increased competitive headwinds and are looking for ways to compete more effectively.

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