The Long(er) Tail

Afbeeldingsresultaat voor the longer long tail

After reading all the secondary literature on this classic book on the economic changes brought by the Internet, finally got hold of it.

Hits are no longer the economic force they once were. A large part of the demand has gone to countless niches. Today’s consumer picks hits just as easily as special non-professional content.

The past: broadcast model sends 1 show to many people. Today: the Internet makes many shows available to 1 person.

Scarcity based economics: requires hits. Only a few slots are available. Then they better be what most people will appreciate. But what is there are an infinite number of slots: The Long Tail.

Curse of the traditional retails business: the need to find local audiences. The market in the stores in only 1/3 of the total market. The biggest money is in the smallest sales.

From geographical separation consumers are now united by their interests.

Theme of the Long Tail:

  • There are more niche goods than hits
  • The cost of reaching niches has fallen dramatically – offering a huge variety of products is now possible
  • Filter now drives demand – filters are necessary for the exploring the Long Tail
  • The demand curve flattens where niches becomes accessible – hits are less frequent and less popular
  • The collective market for niches is huge and rivals the hits market

Trends: democratize production and democratize distribution.

Aggregators like Amazon, eBay, iTunes, Netflix democratize distribution. Production is democratize through availability of technology: video production, music editing, self publishing, printing, …

Aggregators make available a large variety of good, physical, digital, information, services, communities, user created content (this).

Long Tail demand requires a fan-base that is slowly build. Sudden hits become very rare. Hits can be virals.

Collective intelligence filters the content in The Long Tail: ratings, reviews, …

The Long Tail also manifests itself in culture: the Internet deminishes barriers for niche cultures to reach and find like-minded people. Geek Culture arises.

The secret of Long Tail business:

  • Make everything available
  • Help me find it
  • Marketing: focus on word of mouth: influencers, bloggers, A/B testing, gimmicks, stunts, sharing.

A classic.

Good To Great Big BIG Things

Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

I was astonished, reading Good To Great. It has so many findings about great companies, that are massively ignored.

Many business leaders have referred to this book as a guide in their leadership practice. While in their own organisations the findings they cast aside the findings in this book on a day by day basis.

Let’s go through a couple of these themes.

Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.

So no need to attract expensive business leaders from the outside. What we hear about their compensations schemes we sometimes find unethical and excessive.

We found no systematic pattern linking specific forms of executive compensation to the process of going from good to great.

Not only does the compensation not necessarily need to be very high. Moreover, the leaders of these companies stand out in humility. Leaders of great companies are to themselves, focused on the company, not themselves, have a big sense of humility and do not have big egos, are persistent calm and determined.

Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

As surprising, great companies are not great because they have such a fantastic strategy. Nor is it technology or acquisitions, a very promising industry or special program.

Discipline and perseverance are the most important traits of great companies.

Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

…

In confronting the brutal facts, the good-to-great companies left themselves stronger and more resilient, not weaker and more dispirited. There is a sense of exhilaration that comes in facing head-on the hard truths and saying, “We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.

…

No, those who turn good into great are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

It is doing the work, a feel for business, grit, a lack of arrogance, not taking anything for granted, that distinguishes the great companies
It is in such a sharp contrast with what you see in the large majority of the Fortune 500 companies, that I wonder how the leaders in these companies, and the big consulting companies advising these companies, and likely the investors in these companies can continue to ignore such fundamental findings.

When you put these two complementary forces together—a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship—you get a magical alchemy of superior performance and sustained results.

Read on:

Tom Peters, for example The Little BIG THings.

Collins refers to Stockdale’s In Love and War, a book I would like to read next.

Little Insight from Insight Selling

I will (and believe can) summarise Insight Selling by Mike Schulz and John Doerr with a few quotes.51fhppsuv2l-_sx333_bo1204203200_

I managed to get halfway through the book. Concurring with Naval Ravikant who does not read business books as ‘they are very simple ideas wrapped up in a lot of pages’. I also agree to not read books that are not keeping your attention.