Wardley Maps

by Simon Wardley

Open-source book by Simon Wardley on the process of developing the strategic mapping tool that's come to be known as a "Wardley Map."

Book is originally a series of articles published on the Medium online publication. A volunteer has also open-sourced MOBI and PDF versions of the book available for free download: learnwardleymapping.com

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction, Design, Leadership, Productivity

709 pages, Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Bjoern Rochel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven’t read many strategy related books in the past and if I did, those books rarely went beyond the superficial level. This one is different. It’s dense. It’s both abstract and very concrete, theoretic and very practical, high and low level. Believe me, when I say there’s a lot to take in and wrap your head around in this book.

It’s an interesting mix of a bio (smaller parts), lots of theory (around market behaviors, competition and evolution of components of these markets) and a lot of case studies and practical exercises a long the way. Best of all, it’s completely free. You can find the whole book at https://learnwardleymapping.com/.

Core of the book are some basic believes (or doctrines) and the usage of maps to capture the current market situation and devise strategies and strategic plays on top of them in an iterative fashion. Supported by a wide range of environmental patterns that shape the behaviors in the market and help to understand the situation and make it a bit more understandable and predictable. Last but not least it provides a catalog of context specific plays that might help in a given situation.

I have not used the maps yet personally, but I’m definitely trying to give them a spin in my current environment. I learned a lot about capitalistic markets and market behaviors from this book. Having read so many management books on the last years, this was a really fresh breeze.

Part of this is that Simon never tries to sell the one and only approach to rule them all. Part of it is also that the whole book is written in a very humble style, contrary to the typical expert level books, you often encounter in management literature. It’s generally a “this worked for me” kind of style, which I appreciated while reading. Also that Simon seemed to have been a keen reader himself, because the book also references and pics up on a lot of past works by other authors.

For me this was a 5 star book. As I said, I learned a lot. I subtracted one star because sometimes you did feel that this book originated as a series of blog posts and could have used some professional revision to make it more to the point and focused. It also has quite a few redundancies in it that make the book longer than necessary. A bit less would have been more.


In general I can recommend it to anyone who influences or directly contributes to the strategy and gameplay of a company. Be it director level upwards in larger companies or founders at startups.

Give it a try, you won’t regret it

[Yannick Grenzinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really a book but mostly a collection of blog posts (free on medium.com) which makes it not really easy to read.
There is a good deal of inspiring insights about business strategy and decision making at strategic levels. However it's also packed with repetition and the stories of Simon Wardley ( and he says he doesn't love story telling :p )

The best part is the "Wardley's maps" which are an amazing tool to help to make strategic business decisions. And you have the main ideas at the start of the book which is cool when most other business books explain theirs tools after a long story.

[Gerard Chiva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read a lot of strategy books and I didn't realize something was missing until I read Wardley Maps. Actually I didn't read the medium blog posts but a free PDF available in Leanpub.

To me, this learning is a game changer. It adds a missing an powerful perspective on top of other strategy books like "Competitive Strategy", "Good Strategy/Bad Strategy" or "Playing to Win".

[Toni Tassani · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Medium post turned into a book explaining the brilliant idea of the Wardley Maps has been a very difficult read. I've re-started reading twice and I found a lot of repetition and a mix of boring detailed parts along with extremely interesting bits. The idea of having exercises at the end of the chapter did not work for me.
The whole idea of the maps is well explained in some videos out there. I've learnt reading the book, for sure, but the cost has been high.

[Jb]

Not finishing (audio generated from the PDF of the book), but a good help when working on strategy.

[Christoph Kappel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really length book and at least the printed version that I got is probably not worth the money. It kind of feels cheap and like a print-out of a blog - which probably matches the reality.

Anyway, the content of the book is basically the journey of Simon Wardley do apply the mapping idea to basically anything, until he finds adoption and the merits of it. Wardley Maps are currently hyped in the right bubbles, but my impression is the map itself isn't the real thing, but the work and path to it.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm having trouble figuring out if this book is even for me or how to apply it in my current situation. I'm glad to have a basic grasp of the concept, but it's presented so esoterically and in a somewhat patronizing way, that I'm finding it challenging to dig deeper.

[Aksel Nooitgedagt]

Interesting concepts and a high level view on how business must adapt during evolution of technology and the marked. My main take away is that the use of maps can help to align whole company and all departments around what where we currently are (situational awareness) and where we want to be (strategy).

For now I do not give any rating, as the book is unfinished and there is a lot of duplicated content. Hint for the author: maybe you could split it into two parts:
1. Theory behind Wardley Maps. Organized as an handbook, so that the reader can use it during mapping. E.g. I like the way how EMPOWERED is organized. I can always open a chapter which is currently relevant for me,
2. Mapping exercises

[Daniel Wellner · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is truely a lot of deep, yet actionable -mappable- wisdom hiding in this book. However it nevertheless felt like quite a difficult and therefore somewhat tiresome read.

I think I got a good basic understanding of the Wardley mapping techniques, but at the same time I appreciate that applying this techniques to their full extent will likely take years of practice. There is just way too much information in the book to grasp by just reading about it.

Fortunately, since the book is freely available on the internet, it can be used as a go-to source of information on the subject whenever needed.

[zoagli · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really didn’t like this book, and I gave up after having managed only one third within two months. The writing is hard to follow, as it constantly shifts from very obvious to very condensed.

The same can be said about the underlying concept of maps: simultaneously very underwhelming and very overwhelming. I would probably need a live demonstration for my specific business to be convinced.

Until then, I remain unconvinced, and I certainly won’t recommend this book.

[Mark Easton · Rating 5 out of 5]

While predominantly a book on how to drive business strategy by using Simon Wardley's mapping technique, it also includes a treasure trove of anecdotes on innovation, managing the value chain, and product evolution.

An absolute must read for anyone interested in business strategy, leadership, and product or service development.

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to Wardley Maps and how to create them. You get a lot of context on how Simon Wardley came up with creating those maps. This is great to understand the motivation and the reasoning behind the idea but makes it a bit harder than necessary if you just want to create your own maps.

[Heng · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has a lot of useful strategic frameworks paired with real world examples from Wardley's own experiences. I found the concepts of the Wardley Map useful. However, after each successive chapter, the amount of incremental impactful ideas per word day gradually. Otherwise, would be a five start book. Plus, it is free online!

[Xavier Malparty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super interesting concept, consider the first 10 chapters as a high-level introduction. I stopped at chapter 15 because I'm not working in a position where this is useful so I did not have enough real topics and motivation to practice more. I will definitely keep it nearby in case that is changing.

[R2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Asiaa strategiasta, mielenkiintoinen kokonaisuus. Kyseessä koonnos Simon Wardleyn blogeista (19 kirjoitusta)

[Rémi Goyard · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book every c level should read