Assess your market, your competition, and your strengths, then pick one of five essential marketing plays. In The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market authors John Zagula and Richard Tong, now both at Ignition Capital, show how all marketing strategies can be condensed into one of five basic plays. Based on their experience at Microsoft ...

To build a great company, one that solves a new problem, take a contrarian approach to commonly held business wisdom. Seek out secrets to which others are blind. Build a monopoly; direct competition will lead to conformity and erode all profits. Zero to One by Peter Thiel Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future isn’t a how-to ...

Brands can follow one of three patterns to escape the gravity of hyper-mature categories. Reverse brands, breakaways, and hostile brands can all energize brand loyalty by breaking with the herd. True differentiation is a mindset and a commitment to engage with consumers as real people. Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon In the second half of Different Youngme Moon provides her antidote ...

As product categories mature, there is a tendency for all offerings to resemble one another. Traditional marketing techniques and competitive pressure result in a homogenous set of products. To break free of this cycle, companies must invest in their differences rather than attempting to match competitor’s strengths. Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon Although many business books have been ...

Competition in the software sector is moving from individual products and services to platform ecosystems. Five key trends are pushing companies to platform strategies. Platform Ecosystems: Aligning Architecture, Governance, and Strategy by Amrit Tiwana   Platform Ecosystems describes the dynamics that are driving the new basis of competition in software. This is one of the few books in-depth available on product ...

Innovation is hard and ideas only get you up one side of the mountain. You still have to go over the other side to reach your goal by executing well. The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge by Vijay Govindarajan Vijay Govindarajan‘s four books cover different aspects of successful innovation that begins in established organizations (versus startups). In The ...

To successfully incubate and spin-off new ventures, companies must use the right mix of borrowing, forgetting, and learning organizational DNA.  Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution by Vijay Govindarajan Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators covers strategic innovation, which he defines as a process of exploring experimental strategies. He focuses specifically on what it takes to incubate and spin off ...

Differentiation within segments based on the four P’s is limited and easily replicated; strategic segments offer a more defensible position because they involve a more extensive value network. Marketing As Strategy: Understanding the CEO’s Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation by Nirmalya Kumar Value networks are a key theme in Marketing As Strategy. Kumar describes value networks as “the orchestration of ...