Rating: 
Summary: Common sense marketing perspective
Review: Winning firms focus on one of three customer value disciplines: product leadership, customer intimacy, or operational excellence. Trying to be all things to everybody is tantamount to being nothing for anyone. If your firm can't get its act together, you'll find this an inspiring book that makes a compelling case that success is only possible by having the courage to focus on specific tasks & disciplines. This seems very elementary, but I've observed many firms that refused to choose what they wanted to be, ensuring that they became nothing. This book is helpful in positioning exercises.I have two concerns about the book. 1, it doesn't need to be this long in order to get the central idea across. 2, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this model is counterproductive in a Geoff Moore tornado period. If you're in a high-tech tornado, wait until Main Street before applying discipline. Aside from these caveats, I still find the simple model presented in this book as being useful in analyzing market approaches. You have to understand the model in order to know when it isn't appropriate. Product Managers, sales, marketing and product development staff need to be aware of this book and its ideas.
Rating: 
Summary: A Business Classic
Review: You can't make money trying to be all things to all people. Such a simple idea and so hard to live up to. Treacy argues that companies compete on three dimensions: Product Innovation, Low Cost Provision (aka Operational Excellence) or Customer Intimacy. He further argues that the way to make money is by being best in one (and only one) dimension. Trying to be "world-class" in more than one dimension diffuses your efforts, sets up contradictions in your organization and confuses your customers. Pick how you want to compete and be disciplined about sticking to it. This book offers a classic model for thinking about business and how you serve your customers More than just high-level strategy setting, this book gives you a lens through which to prioritize projects and make decisions at every level of management. It brings clarity to confused business cultures (or at least gives leaders a way to talk about why they have different visions of the future of the company). Incidentally, there has been a fair amount of quantitative research since this book was first published confirming the correlation between strategic alignment and financial performance. As long as you've maintained a minimum (parity) on the other dimensions, companies that stick to one agenda really do perform better financially. I was taught the basic model years ago and have used it more times than I can count since. This book is on my very short list of "must-read". The examples are getting a little out-of-date now, but the core lesson is timeless.
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