5 ms·
I take offense to idea of speed as a priority, though not necessarily to the whole article. > All else being equal, the fastest company in any market will win.
by calinet6 11y ago
I take offense to idea of speed as a priority, though not necessarily to the whole article.
> All else being equal, the fastest company in any market will win.
All else is never equal when speed is the driving factor. I have never seen a company execute well while pressuring for speed.
It's significantly more important to think about systems. What is the cooperative source of your speed? What are the barriers to making good product quickly? What allows us to make faster decisions?
Invariably, without fail, unequivocally, the answers to these questions—which are sources of speed, quality, and market fit—lie in the systems that compose a company. Not systems as in slow methodical heavy processes, but systems as in a clear understanding of how things are connected and how to continually improve how they work.
Start with systems, then you can go fast. It's ludicrously dangerous to put the cart before the horse. Granted, much of this article dives into detail on how to make things run smoother in order to go fast—that's great, but if you make it the primary focus, imagine how fast you could go.
Speed... a noble goal, but as W. Edwards Deming said, "By what method?"
- blowski 11y agoI agree with you. Being first (or even early) to market is obviously an advantage, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient for success, as countless examples show. "The second mouse gets the cheese." In a market with rapid growth and technological change, sometimes it can even damage your prospects. For example, MySpace found themselves dominating the market while it was still small, and for whatever reason, wasted the opportunity. Facebook learned from their mistakes and took control of the market MySpace had helped to create.
- joshuapants 11y agoAlso: Tablet PCs vs. iPads.
- stevenkovar 11y agoI've always found it most effective to elect for speed when you reach a point of dissonance—because gathering actionable data is more valuable to me than making zero mistakes. Better to be doing than deliberating. Speed incites action, which accumulates knowledge. I think that is what the article is getting at, if you were to boil it down into one blurb.
- sparkzilla 11y agoYou don't have to add speed to get more data. You can add scope and many other variables.
- marcosdumay 11y agoAlso, the fastest company will almost always lose to a fast one that stops once in a while to ask "Should I really be doing this? Or is there any other better opportunity?".
- loceng 11y ago"All else being equal, the fastest company in any market will win." What's being said isn't necessarily wrong - but it's a moot statement; all else being equal, the best governed company in any market will win. This reminds me of a t-shirt I have. It has a version of The Tortoise and the Hare story on it. The tortoise has an arsenal of weapons on its shell and the hare is laying face down with smoke coming from the would-be holes that the tortoise caused using his weapons/tools. In essence, speed isn't the top leading metric, it is having the proper tools and resources available and utilizing them as efficiently as possible - ergo, all else being equal, the most efficient company in any market will win.
- agumonkey 11y agoA balance between speed and smoothness. High blood pressure is bad in most systems.