4 ms·

This seems like a couple of nice anecdotes thrown together due to an unfortunate preoccupation with a barely-related cliche. The way I'm reading it, the point

This seems like a couple of nice anecdotes thrown together due to an unfortunate preoccupation with a barely-related cliche. The way I'm reading it, the point is to concentrate on your product and making it, in reality, better than the product(s) of your competitor(s) rather than... pivoting? Building a different product? Making your product into something else? Changing your target audience? I guess the only real lesson I'm taking away here is that "if you have product, sell it; if it sucks, make it better." Not exactly groundbreaking, though certainly true. If the desire was to communicate something more general, taking it out of the context of existing product-based businesses with market share and competitors would probably be necessary (but would have probably killed the anecdotes... which is why I'm guessing the article didn't really get off the ground in this regard). So yeah, it's mostly true... but where it is, it's sort of trivially so.

tomblomfield 13y ago
As you suggest, I think the point was that there's often no brilliant idea that will provide a magical solution to a hard business problem - be that a product pivot or a new sales/marketing gimic. Instead, you often know what you need to do - it's a long, hard slog, and it's about sticking at it longer than your competitors. It's a recurring theme in Ben's blog: >> Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: “I didn’t quit.” http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/ http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-diff...

4 ms·

This seems like a couple of nice anecdotes thrown together due to an unfortunate preoccupation with a barely-related cliche. The way I'm reading it, the point

by obviouslygreen 13y ago

tomblomfield 13y ago
As you suggest, I think the point was that there's often no brilliant idea that will provide a magical solution to a hard business problem - be that a product pivot or a new sales/marketing gimic. Instead, you often know what you need to do - it's a long, hard slog, and it's about sticking at it longer than your competitors. It's a recurring theme in Ben's blog: >> Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: “I didn’t quit.” http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/ http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-diff...