Dealing With Darwin by Geoffrey A. Moore

Moore's Crossing The Chasm was one of the defining books of the dotcom period. Fortunately, Moore's clarity of thought and informed perspective lasted longer than the dotcom boom, and he's kept observing and writing. Dealing With Darwin could have been called Dealing With Innovation, but, hey, T-Rex makes a much better book cover.

But deal with innovation this book does. Rather than a breathy oh-gee-ain't-innovation-neat survey, Moore takes a deep look.

What kinds of innovations work, matter and add value to what kinds of businesses? And how can you manage your kind of business for better systematic innovation?

One of the pleasant surprises of this book is the 'kinds of business' framework - called "Business Architectures." Moore's been building this through past books, but Dealing With Darwin has just a superb, crisp view. He asks, essentially, do you do very complex things for each customer, or do you do large volumes of the same thing for many customers? He labels the first "complex-systems" and the other "volume-operations."

In the hands of a less-informed author, this would be a sophomoric distinction. Here it is the vital choice of perspective before digging into innovation.

On that foundation, Moore then poses, and answers, a much deeper view of innovation in businesses and organizations. What types of innovations have what impact? How do you manage innovation systematically, in your market and in your enterprise? And, critically, how do you get the innovation ball rolling and keeping it rolling.

I found two things particularly "sticky" about this book. One, the business-architecture perspective, which is supposed to be the frame, not the picture, is just a terrific rule of thumb. If your company is a custom software shop (for example), and you think you want to open a product 'wing'....you should read this book first. Moore uses Cisco as a living lab throughout, drawing on his insider access. I found myself thinking of Microsoft and Oracle - the first, really, still a volume-ops business despite their attempts to go enterprise-scale, and the latter a pretty astonishing balance of both volume-ops and complex-systems. (Oracle makes about half of their revenue from consulting - did you know that??)

The second sticky point was Moore basically saying "look, there are MANY ways to innovate. You can't just say 'innovation is good' - you have to target the innovations that work for your business architecture, and you have to manage innovation systematically in your kind of business architecture."

If you're convinced that you have to start managing innovation, instead of just hoping it will happen, this is a great place to start.

Darn good book. Thanks, Arlan.

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