Cea mai mare ambiție în viață a lui Brown e să fie original, iar metoda sa de a deveni original este să ia ceea ce nu este original și să facă invers.

Dacă lui Brown i s-ar da o planetă a sa proprie ca să facă ce vrea cu ea, el ar numi ziua - noapte și vara - iarnă. I-ar face pe toți bărbații și femeile sale să meargă în mâini și să-și dea mâna cu picioarele; copacii săi ar crește cu rădăcinile în aer, iar cocoșul bătrân ar trebui să facă toate ouăle, în timp ce găina ar sta pe gard și ar face cucurigu. Apoi s-ar da cu un pas înapoi și ar spune:

- Vedeți ce lume originală am creat; e în întregime ideea mea proprie!

Un citat dintr-un roman simpatic: „Arta de a nu scrie un roman”, Jerome K. Jerome :)

Reading this book was an amazing experience! The main story revolves around 3 couples: Tomas (an incurable womanizer) and his loving wife Tereza, the same Tomas and his mistress Sabina (an aimless artist), and Sabina with Franz. (a moody and indecisive professor)

“characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.”

As the story unfolds the author pauses frequently to contemplate intriguing philosophical questions. The motif is The Difficult Resolution: whether people should be weighted down by meaningful and responsible living or act freely, carelessly, but ultimately with no consequences on the world around them.

“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they are. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, […] his movements as free as they are insignificant.”

“What shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”

Perhaps ironically, all important resolutions in the life of the characters, all irrevocable decisions with profound consequences are done in a careless blink of a second.

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.”

The central setting of the novel is Prague in the spring of 1968 when the Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia to halt their attempts of political liberalization. Telling the story of this agitated period, Kundera has numerous occasions to contemplate on the absurdity of the communist regime.

“the [communist] regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.”

”[…] theory of socialist art: The Soviet society had made such progress that the basic conflict was no longer between good and evil but between good and better. So shit (that is, whatever is essentially unacceptable) could exist only on the other side (in America, for instance), and only from there, from the outside, as something alien (a spy, for instance), could it penetrate the world of good and better.”

This was a tremendous novel and some of its questions kept me thinking long after closing the book. I really enjoyed the style and I’ll definitely look into more writings by Milan Kundera.

This business book by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne was sold in over 2 million copies and translated in more than 40 languages. Despite the high praise it has enjoyed, I am not personally very fond of it. Here’s why.

You can summarize the main idea behind Blue Ocean Strategy in two paragraphs:

Instead of competing in crowded markets, companies should focus on exploring Blue Oceans - large, untapped markets, free of competition. One can discover such Blue Oceans through Value Innovation - the process of creating value for both the buyer and the company.

Value Innovation essentially means bringing a better product (faster, easier to use) for a smaller price (no unnecessary features, less costs). This contradicts conventional wisdom that quality and low prices are mutually exclusive.

Now, this is a fine idea, and I like it. My problem with the book is that there’s nothing really more to it besides this main idea. I got bored going through the 230 or so pages. Here’s what you’ll find if you take the time to read it:

• Repetitions: “Didn’t I read this before?” and “You already said that!” were constantly popping up in my head as I went through the book. It’s tiresome!

• Hardly useful labels and templates presented as tools and frameworks to create Blue Oceans systematically. I think most of them are too thin and too trivial to be useful. For instance, here is essentially The Four Actions Framework:

  1. Come up with brilliant new features
  2. Improve some existing features
  3. Eliminate unnecessary features
  4. Reduce some less important features
  

  What do you think?

• Anecdotal evidence involving hundreds of real companies from dozens of industries such as hotels, cinemas, retail stores, airlines, energy, computers, etc. The authors highlight inspired business decisions that follow Blue Ocean reasoning. The problem is they are all after-the-fact conclusions. We don’t know if the companies were consciously executing BO strategies.

  Take the example of the Apple II PC (1978) which was more powerful and easier to use than its competitor (the IBM PC), at a price affordable for middle-class families. Apple created the market of personal computers for home use. You can certainly call that a Blue Ocean, but does it mean Apple was using BOS with its tools and frameworks? Can we assert that Apple owes its success for doing the key things that constitute a Blue Ocean Strategy? Go figure.

On a more positive note, there is a thing I like about this book. It’s the story of many a world class company executing brilliant strategies, winning the hearts and mind of customers, and reshaping whole industries. Such inspiring stories do more for me than the concepts and theories of the Blue Oceans.

Tom Perkins is the co-founder of America’s premier venture capital firm - Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He served as director of Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Philips Electronics, News Corporation, Symantec, and many more. His VC firm reshaped venture investing and the companies they invested in reshaped whole industries.

Besides doing high business, Tom is a man of exceptional passions, among them yachting, ocean racing, vintage cars, and writing.

This auto-biography is wholly entertaining, sprinkled with dry humor, wisdom, and adventures. You’ll get a glimpse at the founding moments of many historical tech companies. For example, he mentions putting $20M in Google for about 24% of shares in 1999:

John [Doerr of KPCB] helped founders Brin and Page to develop a team - he went on the board and also recruited Eric Schmidt […] to help run the place, and the strategy for selling advertising spotted to searches was developed.

Be advised though, this isn’t a business book! Tom shies away from giving specific business advice and account details. (The whole Google story spans just two paragraphs, despite being “their most successful home run.”) He goes on instead to tell the story of a well lived life, his mentor Dave Packard, his being tried for manslaughter in a backwater French town, his passion for sail boats, the death of his wife, the writing of a novel, and his relationship with Danielle Steel.

By his own account, the toughest assignment he’s ever had was as a trustee emeritus of the San Francisco Ballet Company, helping them become one of the best in the world.

Tom is a brilliant story teller and his memoir is a real page turner.

Why should you read it?

My biggest take away from this book is the inspiring winning attitude of Tom Perkins. With every page I turn he’s taking on another challenge and going the extra mile until he completely wins it. It’s not just about the business, it’s in everything he does. Expect to end up dreaming big and feeling energized after this lecture.

PS: If you are interested in this book and you live in Bucharest I can lend it to you. Just leave a comment.