How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit

Written by the former Director of Software Product Management for Apple Computer, Inc., this is a book first about how to survive amongst the established business giants, and then how to carve an ever-increasing niche in the shared markets. Apple's strategy in the early days was to create advantages for its clients and also to create disruption to IBM. Kawasaki says that it is important to pick a giant to fight against - you have more to gain and more credibility to be established. To get started you must know your own company very well, your customers very well and your enemy very well. For your own company, all efforts must be made to discover how your customers see you. Why do they buy from you, and why don't they buy from you? Then you must define who your customers really are. Are the people that buy your product, the ones that are using your product? To find out about your competition, study them by visiting them and patronizing them so that you can establish their modus operandi for sales, service and follow-through. To find your niche, you must discover that which you offer that you have both a high ablity to produce, and a high value to the customer. This should be your focus. The title of this book is misleading. It talks about disrupting the other fellow... It seems this tactic is for your own company morale and the title of this book mostly for sales. This book is really about finding a way to make your customers happier than anybody else can. Kawasaki goes over the importance of not feeling thwarted by another company's advances and gives proper and strategical retaliations. Creativity is a main theme in this area. Be unpredictable. He discusses the methods and importance of recruiting evangalists for your product, offering samples, and building customers' allegiance early and often. Ask 'What would cause my customers to use my product more often? What would cause my customers to use more of my products each time they are used? How can people have more fun with my product?' Find a great cause, find the right people - make them feel part of the team, and go make history! Five Stars

Guy Kawasaki combines insights from eastern philosophy with practical business advice on how to disrupt the market in favor of your company. Through strategic planning and zest for the game, companies can move in on their competitors' customers, credibility, and profit - and have a lot of fun in the process. This exhilarating book is packed with useful exercises, examples, interviews, and even a sampling of children's literature. We [...] recommend it to executives of big and small companies who want to shake up the marketplace, and to career-minded individuals eager to rise in the ranks and make their companies stronger.

In How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Kawasaki urges his reader to create disruption for "fun and profit." The book is organized into four parts: Lay the Groundwork, Do the Right Things, Do Things Right, and Push the Envelope. Within each of the four parts, Kawasaki includes interviews with various corporate executives who share their real-world experiences. He offers hundreds of examples to illustrate his ideas about non-conformist strategies which will help achieve a competitive advantage.In his more recent book, Rules for Revolutionaries, Kawasaki asserts that, inorder to break down the barriers to innovation, one must "command like a king." That is to say, have steadfast convictions and then communicate those convictions to others with the power of faith and self-assurance. When asked to explain what a champion is, Jack Dempsey replied that a champion "gets up when he can't." Such determination is admirable, of course, but not always prudent. (What if David had decided to wrestle Goliath?) Agreeing with Jeffrey Gitomer, Kawasaki insists that customers must become "evangelists", not merely buyers of whatever one sells. Sustainable customer loyalty is the objective, not satisfaction with a single transaction. The same is true when one must generate support to overcome resistance to change. Two mistakes must be avoided: in Barbara Tuchman's words, "assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting contrary signs", and, "the refusal to benefit from experience." Only by being alert to "contrary signs" while benefiting from experience can anyone hope to prevail.Kawasaki has sometimes been described as "controversial", usually by those who feel obliged to defend the status quo. Kawasaki challenges all assumptions and premises (including his own), convinced that agility, mobility, and hostility are essential to success in the competitive marketplace. His is a pyrotechnical mind combined with street smarts and unlimited energy. He enjoys creating "disruption"...especially when it creates profits. Read his books, follow (if you can) the way his mind works, and then go have some profitable fun yourself.

I laughed my way through this book. I am designer who was constantly frustrated with the back biting that goes on between myself and other designers. This wonderful book helped me utilize simple techniques to step out of that circle of ego and become the positive, constructive colleague I wanted to be. It could really be called 'How to Make Friends With the Competition and Still Influence the Right People" because it has a bit of Dale Carnegie mixed in with Depak Chopra!! or maybe "Zen in the Art of Sharing the Cash Flow" (There really is room for everyone who wants it!)

Coming from the public education arena, I was (amazingly enough) able to find approaches to dealing with all my associates, from my students to their parents to my administrators. A great read for anyone who is interested in creating a quality product