Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove and Steve Jobs, by David B Yoffie and Michael A Cusumano, Pages 272. Rs 1,347
Gaurav Kanthwal: Strategy Rules establishes five commonalities in the professional lives of Bill Gates, Andy Grove and Steve Jobs and encases them as universal formulae to become an effective master strategist. Harvard Business School professor David B Yoffie and Michael A Cusumano from the MIT Sloan School of Management have not gone about crunching extraordinary attributes of the three CEOs but focused on the ways they took to build an edifice for Microsoft, Intel and Apple, respectively. The authors have had the advantage of knowing the big shots personally. Their research includes interviews of close associates, colleagues and rivals, access to internal memos, presentations and e-mails. They are a privy to the water-cooler talks of these organisations. All of it is showing in the book. Normally, comparative analysis is the procedure followed to study two or more subjects, but here it is a comparison of ideas that are formed after closely observing the highs and lows of their life. By the time the 254-page book comes to an end, a clear image of each subject and how he achieved success is formed in the reader’s mind. Behind the façade of a tech geek
(Bill Gates), the engineer (Andy Grove) and an aesthete (Steve Jobs), there is a deep understanding of software as a technology and business; intense commitment to instill engineering-like discipline in management; and a unique understanding of product design. Their philosophies have been tersely conveyed. Gates mantra to success is simple, ‘Let’s embrace what’s been done well by our competitors and go beyond that.’ Andy Grove believed, ‘Execution is God’ and the philosopher in Steve Jobs is guided by, ‘God is in the details.’ These could well have been the punch lines of Microsoft, Intel and Apple. Inspirational figures are expected to deliver quotable quotes also. This book fulfills those expectations by quoting other sources. There is Wayne Gretzky, ice hockey great, saying, ‘The job is to skate where the puck’s going, not where it’s been’; metaphysical poet John Donne writes, ‘No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main (Mediatation XVII). Though Gates, Grove and Jobs were perceived as innocent and genial in the outer world, inside the dog-eat-dog universe of high technology, they have been portrayed as mean, wily, and ruthless bullies. Both Gates and Jobs loved to indulge in one-upmanship and left no opportunity to humiliate their rivals within and outside their organisations. Gates and Jobs were hated figures in their organisations, the authors claim. Steve Jobs used to remove the license plate of his Mercedes and park it at the space reserved for physically
challenged in Apple’s parking lot. Alluding to Microsoft’s characteristic sloppiness in its products, Jobs snide would be, ‘If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later. That’s what other companies (read Microsoft) do.” The chapter 4 Exploit Leverage and Power — Play Sumo Judo and Sumo is worth reading for the predatory and domineering skills of the CEOs. Often strategy and tactics are mixed up, but here Gates, Grove and Jobs have elucidated the difference by referring to the former as a playing field and the latter as how you play the game. As a validation of strategy rules, the authors say that they find a reflection of these master-strategists in Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (a hacker, Harvard dropout like Gates), Google’s Larry Page (trained in science and an engineer like Grove) and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (a compulsive consumer-oriented non-conformist like Jobs) in the current scenario. The notes and index section at the back of the book have been prepared meticulously by the authors but the book is tediously repetitive. Occasionally, a grammatical error too can be spotted in a book published by Harper Collins.Source: Article
(Bill Gates), the engineer (Andy Grove) and an aesthete (Steve Jobs), there is a deep understanding of software as a technology and business; intense commitment to instill engineering-like discipline in management; and a unique understanding of product design. Their philosophies have been tersely conveyed. Gates mantra to success is simple, ‘Let’s embrace what’s been done well by our competitors and go beyond that.’ Andy Grove believed, ‘Execution is God’ and the philosopher in Steve Jobs is guided by, ‘God is in the details.’ These could well have been the punch lines of Microsoft, Intel and Apple. Inspirational figures are expected to deliver quotable quotes also. This book fulfills those expectations by quoting other sources. There is Wayne Gretzky, ice hockey great, saying, ‘The job is to skate where the puck’s going, not where it’s been’; metaphysical poet John Donne writes, ‘No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main (Mediatation XVII). Though Gates, Grove and Jobs were perceived as innocent and genial in the outer world, inside the dog-eat-dog universe of high technology, they have been portrayed as mean, wily, and ruthless bullies. Both Gates and Jobs loved to indulge in one-upmanship and left no opportunity to humiliate their rivals within and outside their organisations. Gates and Jobs were hated figures in their organisations, the authors claim. Steve Jobs used to remove the license plate of his Mercedes and park it at the space reserved for physically
challenged in Apple’s parking lot. Alluding to Microsoft’s characteristic sloppiness in its products, Jobs snide would be, ‘If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later. That’s what other companies (read Microsoft) do.” The chapter 4 Exploit Leverage and Power — Play Sumo Judo and Sumo is worth reading for the predatory and domineering skills of the CEOs. Often strategy and tactics are mixed up, but here Gates, Grove and Jobs have elucidated the difference by referring to the former as a playing field and the latter as how you play the game. As a validation of strategy rules, the authors say that they find a reflection of these master-strategists in Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (a hacker, Harvard dropout like Gates), Google’s Larry Page (trained in science and an engineer like Grove) and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (a compulsive consumer-oriented non-conformist like Jobs) in the current scenario. The notes and index section at the back of the book have been prepared meticulously by the authors but the book is tediously repetitive. Occasionally, a grammatical error too can be spotted in a book published by Harper Collins.Source: Article
