Nice book quite a bit old (1999) but still interesting

books:

	• Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services Guy Kawasaki, Michele Moreno Collins Business, 2000 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 107 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nice book quite a bit old (1999) but still interesting

The rules are 1) create like a god, 2) command like a kind and 3) work like a slave. I think most of the book looks like the new economy bubble: fast over-optimistic growing and suddenly crack down. However it is a nice reading and for whom are used to this kind of literature could be interesting because it gives a glimpse of how we were 8 years ago especially considering we are living the sub-prime bubble world-wide crack down just by now. What about the authors? Uhm, the sensation I received by the book and that one by reading his biography on wikipedia coincide: a good teacher for a MBA course but he does not sound like a great entrepreneur. He is too much theory and too less practical action. A business need an innovating idea in order to enter in the market but its managing should not be pushed forward by someone thinking like a samurai at the war. Synthesis: good book to read but not a entrepreneur manual, AFAIK. Another citation interesting in order to understand the soul of this book is "think digital and act analog". Umh, my grandma was used to say: "real world is not a white/black place. It contains a lot of colors and grays too", I think my granny should not need a MBA nor read books to know the basic rules of the life and the business. She was used to say, too: "work hard, think with your head, do not follow common people" which could be translated in more explicit words: "works like a slave, command over yourself, be creative". Definitely Guy did not said anything my granny was a feet or two far away however he admitted the book is also a log of his own most expensive errors! So, in the end, it is Good Thing [tm] learning from a book by whom had the patience to write down it. ;-)

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Truly inspiring

It's been a pleasure to read this book. Actually took 3 days to finish it as Guy is capable of winning your attention and devotion since the very first pages.
It's full of practical real-world examples. Very informative and truly inspiring. Recommended!

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A good book, but buy 'Art of the Start' instead

Mr. Kawasaki is an ethusiastic author and this book is an adequate primer on the subject of entrepeneurship and general business 'starts'. The best book on this though is his 'Art of the Start'. That is the book you want for the same material, refined, updated and better organized.

Valuable advice that stands the test of time

Guy Kawasaki is a genius. I mean it: here's a guy who wrote a book back in 1998, who is most famous for being the Chief Evangelist at Apple. Yet his book bypasses tech talk altogether as its focus and succeeds at presenting us with a volume that, even ten years later, is loaded with wisdom that any self-respecting entrepreneur ought to be reading.

The philosophy underlying the rules for revolutionaries sounds quite simple yet it's very powerful: create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave. Each of these parts in his book is further broken down to facilitate digesting it. Since others here have done a find job at analyzing the three main components in the past, I am focusing on the aspects that stood out for me.

Work the edges: Kawasaki borrows the concept of "edges" from architecture to have revolutionaries focus their energy where it is going to be best spent. By edges, he means where one surface or material meets another or changes into another. He says: "The action is not in the centers or areas of sameness," and he is very much right about this. Examples of this are: how a customer service representative deals with a customer, even more so with a customer who is bringing up an exceptional issue; and the user interface of software or product, where the user interacts with the functionality.

"Revolutionary products don't fail because they are shipped too early. They fail because they aren't revised fast enough." He doesn't condone poor product design with this comment. He rather condemns poor product management. In coming up with a recipe for great products, he expands a concept he introduced in a previous book seven years before: DICEE,
-D for deep: the mark of a deep product is wishing it had a feature after you've used it for a while and then discovering that it already does.
-I for Indulging: it is more than what you minimally need and costs more than what you could have minimally spent.
-C for complete: this focuses on the documentation and the customer service.
-E for elegant: without elegant design, people cannot figure out how to use deep products.
-E for evocative: you should strive to create something that some people will love rather than something everyone will merely like.

"Sometimes you have to 'hear' what people would say if only they knew better." How many times, while managing a product, have you heard nice-to-have feature requests that sounded like essential to the people requesting them?

"A significant gulf, the 'chasm,' exists between the market made up of early adopters, and the markets of more pragmatic buyers." Do everything you possibly can to make the chasm as small as possible, which means tearing down barriers for your product users to learn about your product, care about your product enough to change their existing habits, gain access to your product, be able to afford it and learn how to use it.

After you have broken down or lowered the typical barriers to adoption of your product, you should build a cocoon around your customers so the competition can't attack you.

Evangelism starts with a great product or service. With success typically being equal to Facts (features customers want) divided by price, one can increase success by adding more features (increase the numerator) or reducing the Price. Evangelism provides a third method for increasing the numerator: adding Emotions to the Facts before dividing them by the Price.

"Make the optimal solution feasible -as opposed to making the feasible solution optimal." -this is one of the most brilliant phrases in the whole book!

"Ensure backward compatibility for evolutionary improvements to your product. But when it comes to revolutionary leaps, make your product so innovative that people won't care about backward compatibility."

"The more information you give away, the more you get as people come to trust you and see mutual benefits." -who remembers that movie?

"Big titles mean little to revolutionaries. All you care about is that a person 'gets it' and wants to help you." -very true!

"Tolerate criticism. Not only should people feel free to plug competitive products, they should be able to criticize your own... first, this produces good PR because tolerating criticism on a company-sponsored site is unheard of; second, this produces few and voluminous customer feedback."

And last, but not least: "As long as customers are still complaining, they still want to do business."

Now I am reading "Selling the Dream", another one of his books. I am convinced!

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Good reading overall

After reading the Art of the Start, I decided to purchase it and this book, Rules for Revolutionaries. As with the Art of the Start, I found the book motivating and an interesting read. The one downside of the book is that there is some overlap between it and The Art of the Start.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Guy Kawasaki, CEO of garage.com and former chief evangelist of Apple Computer, Inc., presents his manifesto for world-changing innovation, using his battle-tested lessons to help revolutionaries become visionaries.

* Create Like a God *

Turn conventional wisdom on its head-create revolutionary products and services by analyzing how to approach the problems at hand.

* Command Like a King *

Take charge and make tough, insightful, and strategic decisions-break down the barriers that prevent product adoption and avoid "death magnets" (the stupid mistakes just about everyone makes).

* Work Like a Slave *

Get ready for hard work, and lots of it. To go from revolutionary to visionary, you'll need to eat like a bird-relentlessly absorbing knowledge about your industry, customers, and competition--and poop like an elephant--spreading the large amount of information and knowledge that you've gained.

Filled with insights from top innovators such as Amazon.com, Dell, Hallmark, and Gillette and rich with hands-on experience from the front lines of business, Rules for Revolutionaries will empower you--whether you're an entrepreneur, engineer, inventor, manager, or small business owner--to turn your dreams into reality, your reality into products, and your products into customer magnets.

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