Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past

Escape Velocity by Geoffrey Moore addresses the fundamental issue of driving deep innovation and value realization in your company not by some new silver bullet but by the hard work required to free your company's future from its past. Moore's central premise in this well written, actionable and highly recommended book, is that companies have a structural bias for investing in things today that cause it to starve out the new products and services that will generate growth in the next 2 -3 years.Moore is a well-established innovator, thinker and marketing expert in the Silicon Valley. His prior books like Crossing the Chasm, Dealing with Darwin, etc. are foundational in the tech industry. This book leverages these prior works, but it does not require you to have read them. Suggestion if you are looking to read a companion work I would suggest Crossing the Chasm as it is related to the topics discussed in Escape Velocity. This book is not a rehash of his market adoption model. Rather it is a new set of tools concerning how you think about, develop and execute new strategies that break you out of last year plus 10% thinking.What makes this book highly recommended is that Moore offers a broad set of tools that work outside of tech to give executives and leaders real tools that they need right now. This book is a model for a business book that is actionable, practical and deep enough to help you apply the ideas while still being engaging and interesting.The book organizes itself around a hierarchy of powers that together shape a market, companies competing in that market and the products and services they offer in that market. The powers are:Category Power - the demand for a class of products, for example smart phones, fuel-efficient cars, or energy bars.Company Power - the relative status and prospect for your company compared with peers. For example: Nokia vs. Samsung, Honda vs. Ford, Cliff vs. KashiMarket Power - the company's power relative to a market segment, for example Subway in Quick Service Restaurants.Offer Power - the demand for a product or service relative to reference competitors. The classic here is Whopper vs. Big Mac.Execution Power - the ability to outperform competitors under equal conditionsThe remaining chapters in the book concentrate on each of these powers, what they are, how they work, tools for applying them and at least two specific case studies that illustrate their importance. Put all of this together and you get a powerful and actionable playbook for creating new market strategies.Moore does surprisingly little pontification on market strategies, something common in other marketing related books. Instead he shows you via 13 tools that you can use found in each of the powers. To give you an example of the completeness of this book, here is a list of the tools it contains:Category Power - Category maturity lifecycle - Growth/Maturity Matrix - Horizon modelCompany Power - Competitive separation - Two-business architecture model - Crown Jewels modelMarketing Power - Nine point market strategy frameworkOffer power - Retain or innovate model - Six levers model - Price/Benefit model - Core/context modelExecution Power - The arc of executionListing all of these models may give the impression that the book is more of an encyclopedia or compendium than a book that makes an actionable argument. Nothing could be further from reality. Moore uses his experience, the central thesis of the book and case studies to describe why certain things have happened, why leaders made different decisions and the results of those decisions.Moore finishes the book with a discussion of how you use these tools to transform you execution, vision or strategy. This brings the toolset together and demonstrates that these tools work in practice rather than in theory.Escape Velocity is a culmination of Moore's other works. Rather than simply restating them in today's context, Moore is sharing the fundamental tools leaders can use to develop and execute their company's strategies. This is one of those rare books that should be purchased, studied, annotated and tried in your company. Not every tool will fit, but the book gives you enough support such that you can make that judgment for yourself.This sounds like a gushing review, this book has been one of the best I have read in 2011, but it does have some flaws. The examples and cases concentrate on high-tech, which may turn off some. The requirement for a leader that is willing to make asymmetric investments in new products and services is true, but under developed in the book. The book covers Moore's personal experience, which will make some see it as a digital infomercial. I believe these weak points exist, but this book is more than worth your time and attention.A suggestion, buy the hardcopy as you will be making notes throughout the book, dog earing pages, etc. I read it on an eReader, which is great, but now using it as a reference is not the same as a hard copy. You will use this book as a future reference.Highly Recommended for any business executive who feels that their current strategy has lost its potency, punch and ability to drive sales

Geoffrey Moore is a very successful author and has also started multiple consulting and speaking businesses. He is also a partner in a venture capital firm. Mr. Moore writes extensively about strategy and marketing, particularly in technology markets.In Escape Velocity Mr. Moore sets up circumstances in which businesses struggle with a transition from existing products and services to the products and services that will replace them.I have two quick observations: first, this book is clearly about business-to-business marketing. If you are in the B2B space, there are some lessons here, but this book clearly is not aimed at you. Second, since Mr. Moore is involved with tech companies, his examples are almost exclusively tech examples. Not so narrow as not to be interesting, but perhaps limited for readers who are in, say, insurance or construction.Moore's theme is that there is a hierarchy of strategy, which he labels powers. (It is my interpretation that these are strategy equivalents). Specifically and in order: Category Power, Company Power, Market Power, Offer Power and Execution Power. He sets up his argument with examples of enterprises where strong legacy products exist and the enterprise gets the majority of its cash flow from those. Some more forward-thinking members of the firm envision the next generation product and begin scratching for resources to advance those. In his view as presented in this book, far too many firms are too reluctant or at least too slow to free up the best people and adequate capital to support the new. The old-world firm that I would point to as the exemplar of the opposite is Gillette, which has steadily and relentlessly pushed its lead in razors and razor blades, cannibalizing the old product.The chapters after the set-up describe each of the five "powers" with prescriptions on how to fight organization inertia and obtain adequate funding to identify the most promising new products and harvest the old.Overall, I would describe this as a useful management book. More relevant for tech space readers, and most relevant for B2B tech space readers.

I have been a fan of Geoffrey Moore's work since "Crossing the Chasm" was first published 20 years ago. That book remains as relevant now as it was then. Anyone familiar with his earlier works will recognise some powerfully resonant concepts in the contents of Escape Velocity, but Moore has moved his sights from start-ups wanting to move into the mainstream to established companies wanting to break away from the pull of the past. Moore's ideas - as always - are simple, effective and highly relevant. Don't let the fact that this is pitched at established companies put you off if your company is still in start-up or growth phase: you'll find ideas you can put into action here.

How do you keep innovating as an established business without the accountants taking over? Well Moore knows........A practitioners book - fixing joining up strategy with execution - done in a way that allows innovation to flourishEver grappled with actually trying to implement any of Porters strategies or Balanced scorecards or had budgets thrust upon you to sort out super quick for next year calling for growth just based upon a factor of last years results?Brand new frameworks and approaches that are not taught at Business School (MBA), perhaps they should be....Highlights for me : The hierarchy of powers, material to growth matrices, core/context modelsMy head hurt in the last couple of chapters as Moore unleashed his thinking...When I sat down and applied it to my job it gave new insight that I couldn't have gained by just abstracting myself - not enough time to do it.So Moore gives you a shortcut.........Well worth going back over the frameworks to embed them as the need arises - a permanent place in my kindle just for that reasonCombine it with Outcome Driven Innovation and Lean Start-up approaches too.....

This book can get highly technical at times but is still worth the investment. For those who have less time, I'd recommend watching his Stanford lecture which does a great job of summarising the most important elements of the book.

Interesting in parts with some applicability. I found the section around the various types of corporate cultures most interesting and useful.

Geoffrey Moore is a well respected author in the computing field. The advice in this book is interesting enough for it to affect the way business is run.