Product Description

The fault line--that dangerous, unstable seam in the economy where the Internet and other powerful innovations meet and create market-shattering tremors. Every company lives on it; no manager can control it. Everyone must learn to deal with it.

Now, Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, two bestselling works that helped guide the high-tech revolution, explores the new management paradigms that will guide businesses in the twenty-first century, showing them how to survive and thrive on the fault line.

In this long-awaited new book, Moore turns his attention to the most important question for businesses: How can companies that rose to prominence prior to the age of the Internet manage for shareholder value now that the Internet is upon us?

The old management truths are dead. Business models that worked admirably until the last decade of the twentieth century must be replaced. The dotcoms are invading every sector of commerce, overturning established relationships, reengineering markets, attacking long-established price points, and disintermediating longstanding institutions.

What should management do when it is under direct assault from companies no one ever heard of even a few years ago?

In a book that will reset the management agenda in the age of the Internet, Moore shows why sensitivity to stock price is the single most important lever for managing in the future, both as a leading indicator of shifts in competitive advantage and as an employee motivator for making necessary changes in organizations heretofore impervious to change. He prescribes a new agenda for management teams that includesNew strategies for achieving and sustaining competitive advantageNew metrics to keep management teams on course with these strategiesA specific blueprint for how the blue-chip companies can meet the challenge of the dotcomsModels of organizational change for each stage of market developmentThe crucial role of declaring a culture inenabling swift response to global change

Today practically every company, whether inside the high-tech sector or not, is living on the fault line. By synthesizing his groundbreaking earlier work on the dynamics of technology-based markets with a new focus on managing publicly held corporations for shareholder value, Geoffrey Moore provides a highly prescriptive guide for any company struggling to manage the disruptive forces of the new economy.

In Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, Moore created a new language for navigating the technology adoption life cycle. In Living on the Fault Line, he once again offers a brilliant set of navigational tools to help meet today's defining management challenge-managing for shareholder value in the age of the Internet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #962151 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-30
• Released on: 2000-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.com
Geoffrey Moore's first two books, Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, were gospel to a generation of high-tech managers. The challenge those books addressed was how to market and sell according to what he called the "Technology Adoption Life Cycle." In Living on the Fault Line, Moore takes his message to a very different group of execs, those who have never had to worry about marketing technology but who now face the biggest and most disruptive technology life cycle of all--the Internet.

Moore contends the Internet has changed everything, and he means it. As many companies are now discovering, market share is worth more than earnings; virtual integration trumps vertical integration; and the IT department, once relegated to a stuffy back office, is no longer "about the business--it is the business." The best proxy of a company's success? Try its stock price. Moore writes, "Stock price is in effect an information system about competitive advantage, it can help you sort through which markets to attack, which strategies to pursue, which partners to endorse, and which tactics to execute.... Capital, in other words, flows to competitive advantage and abandons competitive disadvantage."

For some, Moore's prescriptions may seem over the top. But those grappling for a handhold on the Internet economy will find much to ponder here. For example, managers faced with a scarcity of time and resources will find his analysis of core and context a powerful prism to manage by. He defines "core" as activities that differentiate a company in the marketplace and thereby drive its stock price. "Context" is simply everything else the company already does. His suggestion: assign your best people to the core and outsource as much of the context as possible.

If you've enjoyed Moore's previous work, you'll find Living on the Fault Line a must. If you've never read Moore before, get this on your bookshelf before your competition does. Engaging and highly readable, this one's a keeper. --Harry C. Edwards

From Publishers Weekly
Readers looking for "how to" advice, specific examples or more than introductory thinking about how to use a company's stock price as a management lever are bound to come away from this uninspired book disappointed. A consultant and venture capitalist, Moore (Crossing the Chasm; Inside the Tornado) begins by explaining why companies must focus on what they do best-but the concept of "core competencies" has been around for almost a decade. He then goes on to say shareholders reward firms that have a clear competitive advantage in the marketplace. But that idea's probably been around as long as stock markets themselves. The key to gaining that advantage today, Moore argues, is embracing the right technology. Only how can you tell which is the right one? Clearly, Sony thought it was on the right track when it created Beta, only to lose out to the VHS technology that governs most VCRs today, and the thousands of failed software companies dotting Silicon Valley must have thought they were on the right path when they opened their doors. What do all the failures have in common? Moore provides little in the way of answers. He concludes, again as others have before, by suggesting that companies must change their management styles as their core technology matures. But the point would be more telling if he had provided detailed examples of firms that have done that well and those that haven't. Only readers looking for an initial grounding in this area need apply. 6-city author tour; 15-city NPR radio campaign. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Moore sets out to answer the question, What should a public company that rose to prominence prior to the age of the Internet know and do about its stock price now that the Internet is upon us? His book comprises six chapters on such topics as companies whose competitive advantages are weakening and hence need to rethink their core focus (any activity that could raise the stock price). He also reviews the nature of shareholder value, contending that the stock price is an indirect measure of competitive advantage, and he explains the notion of competitive advantage in technology-enhanced markets. We learn that competitive advantage strategy has to change more frequently and dramatically than many organizations are willing to do, and in conclusion Moore presents four cultural solutions for the New Economy. This blatant infomercial isn't disguised by the author, a consultant, who actually states that the six chapters are material for a sequence of executive workshops, which, one can assume, he will offer to conduct. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Same old baloney
The author himself clues us in to the value of this work in his own preface. At the top of page xiv his comments about his previous work include a telling sentence, "In sum, much of my celebration of a new economy was just a lot of old baloney". Well most of this new work is more of the same. CAP and GAP are a rehash of old concepts tried and true. Context and core is the 80/20 rule revisited. Rather than buying, or god forbid wasting your precious time reading this volume, wait till the author's next book, where hopefully he'll compliment you in his next preface for not having paid money for just a lot of repackaged baloney.

Some Major Points, A Little Carried Away
A good book, while not as important as Gorilla game and Crossing the Chasm.

The significance of it is, i think, on page 96, where the author states the several levels of competition:

1. Competition of New paradigms versus old paradigm (e.g. PC vs. MiniComputers and MainFrames
2. Competition between the new paradigms - Apple value chain vs. PC value chain, for example.
3. Competition for a spot on the value chain - Dell vs. Compaq; MS DOS vs. C/PM vs. Pascal; etc.
4. Competition for a bigger piece of the pie - Intel vs. Microsoft vs. Dell vs. CompUSA etc.

AS you can see, the two first stages involve "collaboration" whereas the 2 latter are concerned with Competition (Michael Porter Style).

There are other significant issues discussed in this book - i just thought i highlight this one as the one that stroke me as most important.

Good Hunting!

The culmination of Moore's business framework thinking
Geoffrey's Moore's latest book should be required reading for all executives in the age of the Internet. Rather than filling out a theoretically weak book with numerous examples, or building a detailed theory which cannot be applied, Moore has produced a brilliant work of practical business theory. Drawing on and extending his work in Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, and The Gorilla Game, Moore looks at various stages in the development of businesses, how to manage for shareholder value, how to create and sustain competitive advantage, and how companies with diverse cultures can effectively overcome the innovator's dilemma. Any executive feeling threatened by the Internet, or wishing to take full advantage of discontinuous innovations, should read this book.