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by
Bharat Anand
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May 8 - July 4, 2020
And that is, ultimately, the central message of this book. Getting things right requires understanding how small things are tied to big ones. More concretely, it requires three things: seeing how what we do is increasingly linked to what others do; looking beyond where we play to bring related but invisible opportunities into focus; and recognizing how what we do is impacted by where we are.
The lesson is clear: Superior products are great, but strategies that exploit connections are better.
tweet from an Airbnb executive: “Marriott wants to add 30,000 rooms this year. We will add that in the next two weeks.”
Their key insight was that the real value of bundling came not from combining products that were similar but from combining customers with different preferences.
“Interpedia’s design called for individuals to work together to build an encyclopedia, but to have each article produced individually,” whereas Wikipedia’s design called for people to edit one another’s contributions
The power of Wikipedia isn’t just that anyone can contribute; it’s that people can improve the contributions of others, while vandalism is curbed.
And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
Does TV viewing increase obesity, or are obese individuals more inclined to watch TV? Are Asians innately better at math, or do they work harder at it? Simple correlations would lead you to infer that there’s some causal relation between two variables, when in fact there might be none.
More data doesn’t pay—the right data does. And having the wrong data can be worse than having none at all.
regardless of where you look, there are two questions any strategist must answer: Where will you play, and how will you win?
So when it comes to strategy for business, rather than for the battlefield or politics, here’s an even sharper and simpler set of considerations to guide you: Figure out which customers to go after and what they really want. Then deliver on it in a unique way. It’s that simple.
“It’s not about your organization at all,” Andrew Rashbass once told me. “It’s only about the outside world, and having a point of view about what’s happening in that world.”
Focus on content or product and you may prioritize the wrong things. Understand user experience and you’ll see real opportunities for differentiation.
They come from going back to the basics of strategy: Know your customers and what they want, and align your organization to deliver it in a unique way. That requires seeing, respecting, and making connections across your decisions.
Stop trying to sell your product. Think social first, product later. The possibilities become not only more and more powerful, but also more authentic.
Connections are about precisely that: making people connect. They aren’t about selling. Get the first part right, though, and the second usually follows.
sought
focus on learners, you need to understand learners—their motivations, abilities, incentives, and problems. It’s surprising how easy it can be to ignore these things, and how little attention is often paid to them. Create the content, offer the best courses, make them accessible, and the rest will take care of itself: That’s exactly the Content Trap.
Recently, he helped create Harvard Business School’s digital learning initiative, HBX, which he now oversees as faculty chair. @Bharat_N_Anand
