on geoff moore

I stumbled upon Geoff’s Blog by Googling him (why does that word come up with a red squiggly line? Isn’t it a verb? Anyway.) and was addicted. I haven’t been that addicted to something I stumbled upon since I read Ted Fishman’s book about doing business in China over the summer, and before that, since I discovered Warren Buffet’s MD&A section in the Berkshire 10-K. At any rate, Geoff’s stuff is enthralling. It’s that way because he describes things that ordinarily are (or seem) so complex in very simple terms – things like business strategies, innovation, next macro steps in technology, and so on. Clearly one of the foremost thinkers about the nexus of business, technology, and creativity, Geoff certainly gets the attention he is due, proven by the key role he played at Davos this past year.

All the same, I can’t say I truly agree with everything he says. For instance, he simply equates Brand to reputation, implying that (essentially) something must explain the gap between a company’s book value and its trading value. This argument ignores the degree of noise often present in the market, the propensity for a sector to be a rising or falling tide that affects all ships, and the efforts of companies to build relationships that allow them to cement their brand. I suppose it could be argued that it’s a question of which comes first: the brand or the trust that people put in the brand?

My position would be that an enterprise needs to take a position that somehow differentiates its from its competitors, and if that position is aligned with what a group of buyers is looking for at a given place and time, this position can be the catalyst for future brand credibility. By extension, neither the brand nor the trust come first, but rather, the calculated risk taken by the enterprise does. I could make this case for a number of companies including Starbucks (re-creating the European coffeehouse in the U.S.), FedEx (turning the paradigm of shipping on its head and having the courage to view and take on the USPS as a competitor), and Caterpillar (investing in equipment ahead of the economic cycles, thus being comfortable with short-term financial risks offset in the future high levels of customer loyalty).

So what do Geoff and his positions do for my outlook on creativity? Well, in this case it’s actually rather simple. It’s kind of like working on the LSAT brain teaser question books or on a Sudoku puzzle – great mental exercise. Sometimes reading corporate manifestos or Fortune articles about how important innovation is can be monotonous and devious, because the perspectives articulated in those forums represent the “here and now” of what’s been on authors’ minds for the last 6-12 months. That’s important in business, but long-run insights (and provocative positions) are far more interesting. So reading Geoff is educational, fun (but, alas, not humorous), stimulating, a bit enraging, and just plain smart – and it makes me a better objective and contextual thinker.