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by jlelonm 2261 days ago
What are some resources you’re using to learn that stuff?
3 comments

Here's some books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

https://www.davidow.com/books/marketing-high-technology/

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank/dp/09...

Each of those books are projects (the order I put them in is more or less recommended) ... that's probably a couple months of careful study.

If you want to intersperse it with light reading, the following non-fiction novels are really good examples of the principles in practice (in not always obvious ways):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

You can get used copies on ebay for about $3 each.

Thoughtfully engaging with the material is likely worth 1,000 times that.

Also the commonly cited Reid Hoffman, Seth Godin and Peter Thiel books I think are mostly a waste of time. Al Ries is ok (and quick) and Jim Collins is good if you're trying to turn around a 5,000 person company, but oh, if only I was so lucky.

Anyway, if you want to come back after reading those, I can give additional recommendations

oh also, disrupted by dan lyons, although not as great, is good fun about the financialization and bullshit of modern tech life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_...

For a 90s take on that theme, try this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_Led_by_Bill_Gates

It's worth quoting how microsoft responded to some groundbreaking technology from Go computing by Microsoft putting together a fabricated circus claiming they had matched the technology:

  Eller's group kluged up this demo for videotape that showed how
  edit in place would work. He launched Excel with a chart in it. Then
  he launched Word with the chart cut from the Excel program. The
  smaller Excel window was hiding in the background, and the Word
  window was bigger so the audience couldn't see Excel. Eller drew a
  gesture on the chart sitting in Word, which called Excel to the top.
  As long as Excel was in the right place, it came right up on top of
  where Word was, and it didn't look like anything had moved. It
  looked like Word had just popped up the Excel menus right into the
  middle of the Word documents so it could be edited. Eller made the
  changes in Excel and closed it. He hooked up a software instruction
  that told Excel to move to the background and disappear behind
  Word. Then it looked like he was working again in Word with the
  proper Excel document embedded in it.

  It looked great on the tape, but it was total bull, pure smoke and
  mirrors, the apotheosis of vaporware. There was no linking or embedding 
  occurring. Eller was simply pulling one application to the
  front of the other one.

  At the company meeting, executive Mike Maples stepped up to
  the podium.

  "Okay, here's this other thing we're working on," Maples said.
  "Here I have my document, and I have my tablet here." He held the
  pen up and waved it.

  "Now I can go into my Word document here, and I can write."
  While Maples was talking, charts and images flashed on the
  screen, and everybody thought he was actually writing on the pen
  tablet as he spoke at the podium. In actuality, he was just waving his
  pencil over blank paper while the videotape ran.

next up on that stack for me to read are Barbara Garson's The Electronic Sweatshop and Robert Cringley's Accidental Empires.
indiehackers is great for guides there