Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces

Rating:
Summary: Sound advice for digital product producers and sellers
Review: "Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces" focuses on the most important questions in marketing:
What motivates a purchaser to actually buy?
When competing products appear similar how do they decide which to purchase?

In the area of digital products there are additional questions that rise out of basic characteristics of the industry itself. For example, digital products come and go so quickly that the consumer must make a decision as to which companies they believe will exist in the next few years. After all, a five-year warranty is of no value if the company folds in two. Will the company be around and supporting their product in three years when technology has changed?

This is the focus of the book, in the area of digital products what produces the momentum that makes consumers purchase the particular vendor's product? The authors conclude that what makes consumers purchase and companies survive in this industry is momentum. And momentum is a function of Mass, Speed, and Direction. A digital company must create mass, develop speed, and set direction.

Customers buy from a company that is perceived to have momentum because they have a fear of ending up with a product that is no longer supported or completely orphaned as a competitor establishes itself as the industry standard. Part of the problem is the conception that digital products are never finished. There is always an update, patch, add-on or newer version of almost any software or hardware that has any sort of digital component. So, how do you develop and use momentum so that the consumer believes they can confidently purchase your product without fear?

The evaluation of a digital product for most consumers is evaluated differently from non-digital products. For non-digital products the consumer has traditionally focused on the features of the product. For digital products the consumer typically evaluates a product not by the features but by how it will make their life easier, more productive, or more entertaining.

The major part of the book discusses the six forces of differentiation and the effect they have on the purchasing decision. For each one of them the authors show how to create them and use them to create momentum. An excellent book on the unique marketing factors of digital products it is a highly recommended read for anyone manufacturing or selling digital products of any kind.

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Summary: A Must Read For Any Company that Plans to Grow
Review: A must read for any company that plans to grow - whether a large multinational conglomerate or a small start up. At its heart, I believe, the book is about creating a growth platform for the company - a compelling value proposition that its customers demand; a motivating vision against which its employees can execute; and a strategic direction that investors and shareholders can comfortably expect. Ron Ricci and John Volkmann cleverly use basic principles of physics to argue that it is not just the speed of change that matters but the overall momentum that a company can generate in the marketplace. The lessons in the book are particularly relevant in today's networked world as companies look to leverage their extended enterprise for breaking away from their industry peers. While the authors use several high tech company examples to illustrate their message, this book is equally applicable in almost every industry. In Pharmaceutical companies looking to carve out therapeutic categories or financial service companies looking to partner in wealth management will find the messages relevant. Personally I found the book a very entertaining read - clear, easy to comprehend yet provocative.

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Summary: Momentum Resonates, Agility is the Point
Review: I approached this book with a wary eye. Similar books have been all too late to explain the bruising landscape for tech marketers. But I was hooked by the early reference to Larry Ellison and both the Media Server and NC programs. Little has been written about these campaigns, to some extent because Oracle is a such an enigma, or an "inevitable" enigma as Ricci and Volkmann point out. Their analysis does a good job of cracking the Oracle marketing code and explaining why it's been an important and effective company.

To their credit, they drive the point that technology is renewable; we've heard too much that tech has "matured," so thanks to the authors for re-teaching us that tech is constantly refreshing. While the book might appear to boast the "bubble" companies, it explains why tech companies will again amass their power and seize the agenda.

I can't deny that "momentum" resonates, but it's confusing to any high school physics student insofar as momentum is typically defined as the product of an object's mass and velocity -- not mass, velocity "and" direction. Despite that, the discussions of agility were the most interesting and where I hope more discussion develops. A company's ability to manage news windows, develop industry discussions and control competitive rhetoric are crucial to its (dare I say it) brand momentum. It's a new plan every day in tech, with or without the bubble, and new ideas and initiatives must be controlled, toward or away from a company, without fail.

Whether Ricci's/Volkmann's ideas become part of the vocabulary remains to be seen, but the book's well written and should bend the agenda in marketing.

Rating:
Summary: Momentum Resonates, Agility is the Point
Review: I approached this book with a wary eye. Similar books have been all too late to explain the bruising landscape for tech marketers. But I was hooked by the early reference to Larry Ellison and both the Media Server and NC programs. Little has been written about these campaigns, to some extent because Oracle is a such an enigma, or an "inevitable" enigma as Ricci and Volkmann point out. Their analysis does a good job of cracking the Oracle marketing code and explaining why it's been an important and effective company.

To their credit, they drive the point that technology is renewable; we've heard too much that tech has "matured," so thanks to the authors for re-teaching us that tech is constantly refreshing. While the book might appear to boast the "bubble" companies, it explains why tech companies will again amass their power and seize the agenda.

I can't deny that "momentum" resonates, but it's confusing to any high school physics student insofar as momentum is typically defined as the product of an object's mass and velocity -- not mass, velocity "and" direction. Despite that, the discussions of agility were the most interesting and where I hope more discussion develops. A company's ability to manage news windows, develop industry discussions and control competitive rhetoric are crucial to its (dare I say it) brand momentum. It's a new plan every day in tech, with or without the bubble, and new ideas and initiatives must be controlled, toward or away from a company, without fail.

Whether Ricci's/Volkmann's ideas become part of the vocabulary remains to be seen, but the book's well written and should bend the agenda in marketing.

Rating:
Summary: Management's vision is one of the key success factors
Review: It is a GREAT book, I enjoyed reading it. Clear, easy to follow the steps of Momentum Building. This book serves as a guide and can be applicable for any size or any type of company that wants to be the successful. The well selected case studies of market leader high tech companies - Cisco, HP, Oracle, IBM and so forth - evidently illustrate the efforts that leaders must undertake in order to build their brand momentum within the Marketplace of Ideas, "where always the best reveal" (J. Milton).

For a PR professional, as I am, it was helpful to understand how important and complex a job it is to keep your CEO personality and the company proposition aligned and consistent. "As a source of future credibility in customer's minds, management vision always exists in relationship to product or service" (pp. 159). Moreover a CEO's vision can determine the future of a whole industry.

This book is a must read for university students in marketing, communications and business fields. Particularly if dealing with research studies; in this research, conducted by Ricci and Wolkmann, students can follow through the design, variables and connections between them, furthermore see great examples and it is not mere statistics.

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Summary: Revising and refining your marketing perspective-GREAT BOOK
Review: Momentum is a must read for all high tech marketers (and most other marketers as well). Ricci and Volkmann do a great job of unpacking the path to a true value proposition and explaining the new dynamics of building successful products, brands and companies.

The "marketing dashboard" is a break-through way to measure and predict the value of your marketing initiatives and the science and art of effective marketing are well understood and presented in Momentum.

Add this book to your Christmas/Hanaka wish list! You'll be glad you did.

Rating:
Summary: Reality Divided by Logic Always Leaves a Remainder
Review: The authors deal openly with a tough topic- technology & network products (and for this reason 5 stars). I found a great deal of usable information, and recommend it for its overview on issues related to defending, supporting, or defeating the dominant position in a product category. By specifically addressing the issue of predictability and what can be known about future sales, it directs the business persons' attention to key aspects of their own business that would be useful to research and change.

The title indicates that it might have some useful "business cookbook" step-by-step recipes. Thankfully, it does not (and where it gets a little precriptive it isn't too much). It wasn't clear to me whether the authors were comfortable with this- experts like being prescriptive. However, with all of us now looking at uncertain futures, predictive tools and ideas on improving likely outcomes are so much more useful and believable than prescriptive methods. It is always that remainder which is left when reality is divided by logic that keeps me awake thinking.

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Summary: The Power of Thought Leadership
Review: The technology industry is presently going through a structural shift -- not merely a cyclical downturn. In an attempt to meet the increasing demands of customers, many or most companies in the industry's various fields are struggling to sell something more than products. Market leaders are selling frameworks, roadmaps and solution sets. They are selling ideas -- and trying to earn back lost trust in the process. That's critical. The technology industry is in the midst of an extraordinary backlash. Its full revival depends on winning back this trust.

Ron Ricci and John Volkmann have written a timely and extremely readable book that outlines these trends and dynamics -- and then offers prescriptive solutions to guide forward-looking executives in the digital realm. As the authors point out, companies must differentiate themselves in "the markeplace of ideas" if they are to become "unstoppable" in the coming years. That means they must engage the minds and elicit the participation of their customers, partners and other parties; not overwhelm them with slick propaganda and manipulative sales techniques. As Ricci and Volkmann demonstrate, smart companies now realize they must develop customers and influential networks, not merely develop new products and "release" them to a confused marketplace.

If there is one concept in the book that is worthy of debate it is the idea of heavily promoting the "CEO's vision." This is unquestionably a powerful way of "communicating existing, and sometimes complex, ideas about possibilities, new innovations and new models" to prospective customers and other key parties. However, in this day and age, CEOs can fall from grace quite easily. If too much of the company's brand is invested in a single individual, it runs a risk that at least deserves further consideration. Why not "scale" the vision of an entire executive team -- or depersonalize the effort altogether? Clearly, there are trade-offs to be assessed.

That said, I highly recommend this book as a seminal contribution to an emerging field: thought leadership marketing. Ricci and Volkmann have built an effective case -- based on both qualitative and quantitative insights. They have demonstrated the power that ideas, trust and market-driven value will play in the next economy.

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Summary: More Internet Fairy Dust
Review: This book disappoints. It presents itself as a management book about market leaders. When, in fact, it is nothing more than a PR book about dot-com busts and fallen market leaders.

The two authors are neither business operations experts nor distinguished business school academics, but two ex-PR guys. I found the book so poorly written that I thought I was reading re-constituted powerpoint slides. It's too bad they left out the pictures.

More interesting are the market leaders they chose to profile: Cisco Systems, AMD, Real Networks, Oracle, Motorola, and HP, among others. Most of these companies have lost more than 80 percent of their total market value in the last two years.

Do today's investors really consider these companies "unstoppable market forces?"

A good alternative is "Execution" by Larry Bossidy, ex-CEO of Honeywell. Jack Welch's favorite book about getting things done in business.

Rating:
Summary: Required reading for technology marketers
Review: This book picks up where Good to Great and others stop, delving into practical formulas for leadership that should be required reading for every student of marketing. It presents a refreshingly concrete and quantifiable strategy for achieving the ephemeral goal of brand leadership that so many dot-bubble companies strove for and clearly never attained. The case studies of IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP and others illustrate clearly and in real terms how enduring technology leaders build and sustain momentum. And the insider's view Cisco's own march to market dominance is engaging - and essential - reading for anyone in the technology market today.