<<This exchange reminded me of a SI "vacation bible school" bible drill. The exchange of ideas has improved the collective knowledge of the community. - areokat>>
That’s good because I was afraid it looked a bit more like the two preachers who split the congregation because one insisted on interpreting the good book very literally while the other kept looking between the lines for deeper meaning. <g>
FWIW, for me the Gorilla Game is not solely an academic or investment exercise revealed only in yellow highlighted paragraphs in passages marked by page points. Although I enjoy quoting the text as much as anyone, this game is played in the field. I was fortunate to be part of the Cisco value chain when the tornado lifted them up, I’ve negotiated partnerships with CSCO, ORCL, MSFT, and DELL, and I'm currently advising four gorilla wannabes (one in the early market, one (a Godzilla with a ferocious temperament but a soft underbelly) in the chasm, and two diligently working through the bowling alley with no tornado in sight. For better or worse, my views on the development of the Gorilla Game are based on my field experience coupled with a desire to stay true to the framework laid out in TRFM.
Without trying to dissect your response to my response, let me share my perspective of how I think the game tends to unfold in the hope it will clarify the point I was trying to make with the poorly received passages I passed on earlier. I don’t think you’ll find any of these ideas stated verbatim in the text but I do believe my distillation of multiple ideas is defendable and fully supported by a read of Inside the Tornado and Gorilla Game and many real world games which fall outside the confines of the text:
· The default state of any market development is a royalty game
· The potential for a Gorilla Game builds incrementally over time starting with a discontinuous innovation
· A discontinuous innovation is rather binary – an innovation is either discontinuous or it is not
· Open proprietary architecture, strong value chain, high switching costs, and barriers to entry are analog – their strength can vary and change over time
· Once these pieces begin to fall into place the potential for a Gorilla game increases dramatically – but it is not a fait accompli
· It is possible to fall off the path at any point in the technology adoption lifecycle – including inside the tornado after being designated the leader
· Companies can lose control of their open proprietary architectures and often fail in their attempts to have their architectures accepted by the marketplace
· The value chain is often weaker than it appears and is vulnerable to competitive attack
· Competition is multi-dimensional and often comes from the parts of an architecture not under the company’s tight control rather than head-on with the parts they do control
· The game does not simply unfold to a Gorilla end state – the companies involved must play the game
· Almost any company can improve its competitive position by trying to play the game
· Sadly, many management teams are unaware of, unable, or unwilling to play the game
I think the world of Geoff Moore and even publicly thanked him for his ideas and industry contributions in a speech I gave two weeks ago. But the books do suffer from the occasional loose definition, inconsistent application of the principles, and contradictory examples. One of the professional reviewers even suggested Moore find a better copy editor for the next book. I’d like to remain true to his framework but get just a little less wrapped up in the literal interpretation of his exact words. Trying to make perfect sense of it all might be an honorable quest for a Knight but could cause our modern day Merlin to descend into the same madness that befell his namesake many centuries ago. <g> |
