番茄鉴书

Play Bigger

★★★★☆ Al Ramadan / Dave Peterson / Christopher Lochhead / Kevin Maney

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本书由 Kevin Many 和硅谷一家顾问公司的几位创始人 Al Ramadan, CHristopher Lochhead, Dave Peterson 合著，书名 同时也是那家公司的名字。但这本书并不是这家公司的一个营销工具，而是希望在 Kevin 的帮助下，not just document what they already knew, but help shape the ideas further and deepen their understanding through journalistic and data research. 并用这些知识来帮助创业者，投资人，公司高管甚至是那些希望在职业生涯中有所建树的普通人。

Kevin 认为他们之所以知道如此的东西，是因为 Before they succeeded, each of them at some point failed spectacularly - and their failures, to my mind, are big reason why they know so much now.

全书的核心就是说要创造一个新的产品类别，并且通过各种方式努力成为这个类别中的 King。其中涉及到 Category Design, POV (Point of View), Lightening strike.

为什么要做 Category Design, 因为 the best product doesn’t always win the category. Different wins.

如果是要做的更好，那就显然就落入了一个现有的 Category，做为一个后来者则必然会被与这个领域内已有的公司或产品拿来比较。虽然作者强调并不存在完全的先发优势，但其是从其列举的例子来看，先发者确实存在巨大优势，那些先发却未能成为 Category King 的公司反而是少数。此外，用户还存在认知上的偏见 Choice Supportive Bias—the tendency to give positive qualities to an option we’ve chosen just because we’ve chosen it. This means that once you’ve committed to a product or service in a new category, you’re likely to feel certain that it is the best even if something slightly better comes along. 而在自己开创的 Category，则拥有了「我的地盘听我的」主动。

像 Christopher 对 Dave 说的

you have two choices in business and in your career. You can position yourself, or you can be positioned.

对于 POV

A great POV pushes people just enough into the future, while giving the world a view toward what lies beyond. If the POV sits too much in the present, then at best it’s not very exciting, and at worst it makes you seem like a me-too copycat. Cast the POV too far forward ahead of the technology and your team can struggle to make a product that lives up to the promise, while your external audience either isn’t ready for your vision or flat-out doesn’t believe it.

把一件事情做成成功的事业, POV 还真的很重要。顺风顺水地时候可能并没有特别明显，在遇到困难的时候，可以激励自己保持前进的动力和信心。很多人并不是不能克服困难，而是没有对 POV 有真心地热爱和认可，所以遇到困难的时候很快就放弃了。

Category Design 完成之后，最重要的事就是要努力成为 Category King 了。Category King 不仅占据绝大多数利润 (In late 2014, Apple took in 93 percent of the industry’s total profits) 而且在经济下行期间，反而获得了特别好的机会来收购或者消除竞争对手。

在成为 Category King 的过程中，要特别注意不要被所谓的「用户反馈」拉到 an existing market that’s already defined and that customers already understand.

Customer generally ask for something better, not different. Give in too many custom requests and you wind up with a bag of doorknobs -- a bunch of product/features that don’t add up to a single vision.

这个问题的本质其实是对短期利益和长期目标之间的冲突和取舍。满足当前用户提出的各种要求可能会迅速产生大量收益。因此一旦短期利益有损于长期目标，就真得需要巨大的勇气来做决断了。

it takes courage for the leader to turn away from some giant amount of revenue now because she just knows that true north is the right path and that creating, developing, and dominating an entirely new category is the better strategy.

Dave’s Three Questions 值得每个参与这个过程的人去思考。

1. Can you explain to me like a five-year-old what problem you’re trying to solve?
2. If your company solves this problem perfectly, what category are you in?
3. If you win 85 percent of that category, what’s the size of your category potential?

我在读的过程中，前面的部分觉得像忽悠，后面却觉得受益匪浅，竟然手不释卷地提前了很久读完了。而且觉得这本书值得经常翻翻，多看几遍。

最可贵的是，这套理论不只仅限于公司的创始人，整个公司上上下下的相关人都应该读一下。而且，对如何看待一家公司的未来发展，也提供了一个视角和标准。对个人的发展规划也有相当不错的意义。这套理论的作用，明显要大于 Soft Skills 里面提到理论。当然，既然更普世，这套理论就不可避免地更加抽象和「没有干货」。而且我也强烈怀疑大部分会有类似感受，极有可能是我最近的经历让我能更有体会一些。

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2017 年的最后一天推送这篇书评，暗地里其实希望 2018 年能有机会 Play Bigger，祝大家顺利，愿自己也顺利，加油。