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Book Reviews: Focus! by Al Ries
This book without question changed the
way we run our business. Although many of
the ideas in the book run counter to
common intuition, nearly everything we
read resonated with us. Ries’
essential message is that the marketplace
is very crowded. Therefore, the best way
for a company to succeed in the long term
is to focus on one area, and become the
leader in that area.
According to Ries, two trends in
particular suggest the benefits of focus.
One is that the bigger the market is, the
more specialization is required for a
company or product to stand out. For
example, in a small town, a single
general store might be sufficient. A
large city, however, can support a
variety of different kinds of stores.
This suggests that as a company gets
bigger, and goes after more global
markets, they should actually offer fewer
products, not more products. The second
trend is that categories tend to
sub-divide as products mature (e.g. there
used to just be cars, now there are 12
categories of cars). The leader of the
main category is rarely the leader of the
later categories (especially not all of
them). People tend to be more comfortable
buying from the market leader in a
particular area, and will attribute
certain benefits to that leader. However,
if the leader blurs the issue, by also
claiming to be the leader in the some
other area, people will often switch to
using a different product. People trust
specialists.
Focus! boils down to common sense. If
a company is very good at one thing, and
concentrates its efforts around that one
thing, the company will be more
successful than if it tried to do many
different things. Ries fills the book
with real-world examples that prove this
point again and again. So convincing is
this book that within a few months of
reading Focus! we had changed our company
name and mission to reflect a singular
focus on wafer fab cycle time reduction.
We recommend that you read it too. It
could change the way you look at the
world.
If you would like to buy this book,
just click on the following link to open
a new window and go directly to Focus! on
Amazon’s website. FabTime is an
Amazon affiliate.
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