The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data

by Gene Kim

They are working toward a common goal. They realize that they are on a journey of learning and exploration, and that making mistakes is inevitable. Creating ever-safer systems and continual improvement is now viewed as part of daily work.

for something this mission-critical, there’s no way we should depend on external services,

we finally have the tools, the culture, the technical excellence, and the leadership to win the fight.

the future requires creating a dynamic, learning organization where experimentation and learning are a part of everyone’s daily work.

“The Fifth Ideal is about a ruthless Customer Focus, where you are truly striving for what is best for them, instead of the more parochial goals that they don’t care about, whether it’s your internal plans of record or how your functional silos are measured,”

ask whether our daily actions truly improve the lives of our customer, create value for them, and whether they’d pay for it.

employee engagement and customer satisfaction are the only things that matter. If we do that right, and manage cash effectively, every other financial target will take care of itself.”

As good as the quarter may turn out, we haven’t blown up the Death Star. It’s still out there, and we need to figure out how to engage it in battle and win. Otherwise, we risk decline, irrelevance, or, worse, extinction.”

Not every idea is a winner,” she says. “For every winning idea, there are many losing ideas.

only one out of every three strategic ideas has a positive result, and only a third actually move the needle in a material way.

customer adoption is a Gaussian distribution curve, naming them the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

“Horizon 1 is your successful, cash-cow businesses, where the customer, business, and operational models are well-known and predictable.

“Almost all businesses fade over time, because any profitable operation will attract competitors.

Horizon 2 lines of business are so important, because they represent the future of the company. They may introduce the company’s capabilities to new customers, adjacent markets, or with different business models.

Horizon 2 efforts come from Horizon 3, where the focus is on velocity of learning and having a broad pool of ideas to explore,” he says. “Here, the name of the game is to prototype ideas and to answer as quickly as possible the three questions of market risk, technical risk, and business model risk: Does the idea solve a real customer need? Is it technically feasible? And is there a financially feasible engine of growth? If the answer is no to any of them, it’s time to pivot or kill the idea.

“In contrast, in Horizon 3, you must go fast, you must be constantly experimenting, and you must be allowed to break all the rules and processes governing Horizon 1,”

“And in this age, and nowhere more than in Horizon 3, speed matters,”

Dr. Steven Spear

for each day you can get to market faster, you can often capture upwards of millions of dollars of additional revenue. If you’re first to market, you will capture fifty percent of the revenue that the entire product category will ever yield. Second place will capture twenty-five percent, and third place will get fifteen percent. For any later entrants, it will surely have been a complete waste of time and money.

“Speed matters. Or more precisely, lead time from idea to marke...

Horizon 1 and Horizon 3 are often in conflict with each other.” He gestures at Sarah meaningfully. “Left unchecked, Horizon 1 leaders will consume all the resources of the company. They will note correctly that they are the lifeblood of the company, but that’s only true in the short term. There is an instinct to maximize profitability and take cash out of the business instead of reinvesting it. This is the ‘manage to value’ thesis and is the opposite of ‘manage to growth.’ If you want growth, Steve, you must protect Horizons 2 and 3, and any learnings generated there must be spread throughout the company.”

“It’s important to share our wins and losses,”

“Our future depends on innovation,” he says. “That doesn’t come from process. It comes from people.”

her charter is to help create a culture of engineering excellence across the entire company. She’ll meet regularly with the top company leadership to understand their goals and strategize on how technology can be used to achieve those goals, which of course helps the company win in the marketplace.

this is surely the nature of this new economy. The power to disrupt the customer experience is no longer just the domain of the FAANGs: the Facebooks, Apples, Amazons, Netflixes, and Googles,” Erik continues. “Instead, it is within reach of almost any organization that wants to disrupt the market.

What’s needed is focus and urgency, and the modern methods of managing the value creation process.

fast beats slow.