69 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
69 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
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# Chapter 5: The Play and a Decision to Act
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## Core Focus
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Transitioning from strategic analysis to execution. How mapping enables decisions about where to attack, demonstrated through building Zimki - a cloud platform preceding AWS by two years.
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## Two Forms of "Why"
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- **Purpose-driven**: winning the game
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- **Movement-driven**: tactical positioning (this chapter's focus)
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## The Kodak Case Study
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Despite pioneering digital imaging, Kodak's film processing business created organizational inertia. They invested in photo printers exactly when camera phones made printing irrelevant. Comfortable options don't guarantee rosy futures.
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## Key Frameworks
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### Accelerators, Decelerators, and Constraints
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- **Accelerators**: open source drives components toward commodity
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- **Decelerators**: FUD and patents slow evolution
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- **Constraints**: dependencies in underlying components bottleneck progress
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### Innovate-Leverage-Commoditise (ILC) Model
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Ecosystem approach leveraging external innovators:
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1. Build utility components with public APIs
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2. Enable external companies to innovate atop your platform
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3. Monitor consumption metadata to identify emerging patterns
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4. Industrialise successful patterns as new utility services
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5. Repeat - creating expanding platforms
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Key insight: monitoring API consumption identifies successful companies faster than marketing surveys.
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### Context-Specific Gameplay Categories
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- User perception alteration
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- Evolution accelerators/decelerators
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- Ecosystem models
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- Positional, defensive, attacking plays
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- Poison mechanisms
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## The Zimki Strategy
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Vision: "pre-shaved Yaks" - eliminate pointless development tasks. Code in browsers, single-language (JavaScript), no infrastructure management.
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Seven strategic points:
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1. Code platform + component services via APIs
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2. Open source entire system
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3. Create certified provider marketplace
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4. Build ecosystem through common services
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5. Eliminate development friction
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6. Exploit utility infrastructure providers
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7. Encourage fragmented infrastructure markets
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## What Happened
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- Beta Feb 2006 (2 years before AppEngine)
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- Rapid growth: 1,000+ developers by Q1 2007
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- Amazon EC2 launch validated the concept
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But: Wardley ignored the board and parent company's needs. They viewed utility computing as unrealistic, refused investment, blocked buyouts, cancelled open-sourcing. Zimki closed by year-end 2006.
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## Key Takeaways
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1. Maps guide strategy but don't determine outcomes - execution requires political navigation
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2. Multiple user needs exist: external customers, employees, boards, parent organizations
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3. ILC models create powerful feedback loops via ecosystem size
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4. Past success creates inertia (Kodak)
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5. Strategy is cyclic - decisions impact corporate purpose itself
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6. Being strategically right means nothing if you can't navigate organizational politics
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