Rigorous specialization allied to making full use of partner capabilities creates ‘productive friction’, an emerging approach to business strategy. Products and practices developed at the ‘edge’, and specifically how a company handles exceptions, is a fertile source of improvement and innovation. Systemic adoption will create value in excess of cost and thus defeat margin pressures. This ‘Red Queen hypothesis’ is an approach to surmounting that primary nemesis of the core competency school of strategy, in which continually improved operations yield no lasting value. The antithesis has been the view that chaotic business environments defeat planning and therefore super operations are the best approach; the authors would seek to organize those line operations at a higher level. A company’s long-term direction should articulate its specialization and how it will collaborate with its ecosystem; operating initiatives should be measured by operating metrics that are leading indicators, not financial metrics that are lagging indicators. The thesis seems to apply to industries with strong reliance on IT. But a foray into public policy implications is unsatisfying and leads to disastrous views of educational policy by touting critical thinking over performance, thus empowering the relativists.

The most effective way to measure customer satisfaction and simultaneously prime a business for growth is to ask clients whether they would positively refer the company: on a scale of 0-10. The percent of scores of 5 and below is subtracted from the percentage of 9s and 10s. This determines the ‘net promoter score’, which indicates the likelihood of well-satisfied customers recruiting new customers. Revenues from customers who rate the business poorly are ‘bad profits’ because they come at the expense of the relationship (i.e., future revenues). Discusses ways of accurately measuring NPS (as at Enterprise Car Rental) and why satisfaction surveys are overloaded and opaque. More interesting is a six-sector grid (high-low profits, detractor-neutral-promoter) on p117. The business priorities are: 1) maintain the core (high promoters), 2) redress high detractors, 3) raise profits from low promoters, 4) move neutrals to promoters. The thesis jibes with one of Hagel’s trio of business types (i.e., network, product development, or customer service), but didn’t need to be a book.

A book-length treatment of the now-famous thesis: digital technology reduces the imperatives of scarcity while introducing the capabilities of search and recommendations (micro tails). Although much thought may gave gone into the popularization of marginal economics, the book does not advance the concept.

Effectiveness cannot be taught but must be learned. It is a self-discipline. It is a modest goal but rare. The keys are 1) time: record where it goes, and consolidate useable blocs, 2) contribution: focus on results meaningful to the organization, not effort, 3) build on strengths: integrate the individual’s purpose and the organization’s required outcome. Do not try to build on weakness, 4) priorities: make the best use of time. Concentrate on results, and on leveraging opportunity (rather than problem solving), 5) decisions: identify the generic context and the most relevant principles. Get opinions first, to understand the relevance of facts. Self-development of executives is the only answer to both objective social needs for organizational performance and the individual’s need for achievement and fulfillment. A second reading.