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Fortune 500 companies precariously perched on the fault line of the Internet Age will either learn to balance on the shifting landscape or be crushed
Living on the Fault Line: Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Internet By Geoffrey A. Moore,HarperCollins, August 2000, $27
HOW SHOULD THE MANAGEMENT OF A PUBLIC COMPANY that rose to prominence prior to the age of the Internet manage for shareholder value now that Web dominance is upon us? The key is to strip the organization of any task that fails to contribute to shareholder value, says Geoffrey A. Moore in this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Living on the Fault Line: Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Internet. Moore, also author of Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers (HarperCollins, 1999) and Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge (HarperCollins 1995), splits his time between serving as a managing director of The Chasm Group, which he founded, and serving as a venture partner at Mohr, Davidow Ventures. (Following the excerpt, see Page 222 for CIO's interview with Moore.)
THE PROBLEM FACING the IS organization, which is the same problem facing the corporation as a whole, is that too much time is being spent on tasks that are context, too little on tasks that are core.
A task is core when its outcome directly affects the fundamental value proposition of the company. This is where companies differentiate, and the goal of core work is to create and sustain that differentiation. To put it in terms of a very simple litmus test: Any behavior that can raise your stock price is core-everything else is context.
For such activities, the goal is to differentiate as much as possible and to assign one's best resources to that challenge. By contrast, every other activity in the corporation-and almost certainly this is the bulk of all activities-is not core. It is context. The goal with context is to execute
Living on the Fault Line: Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Internet By Geoffrey A. Moore,HarperCollins, August 2000, $27
HOW SHOULD THE MANAGEMENT OF A PUBLIC COMPANY that rose to prominence prior to the age of the Internet manage for shareholder value now that Web dominance is upon us? The key is to strip the organization of any task that fails to contribute to shareholder value, says Geoffrey A. Moore in this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Living on the Fault Line: Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Internet. Moore, also author of Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers (HarperCollins, 1999) and Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge (HarperCollins 1995), splits his time between serving as a managing director of The Chasm Group, which he founded, and serving as a venture partner at Mohr, Davidow Ventures. (Following the excerpt, see Page 222 for CIO's interview with Moore.)
THE PROBLEM FACING the IS organization, which is the same problem facing the corporation as a whole, is that too much time is being spent on tasks that are context, too little on tasks that are core.
A task is core when its outcome directly affects the fundamental value proposition of the company. This is where companies differentiate, and the goal of core work is to create and sustain that differentiation. To put it in terms of a very simple litmus test: Any behavior that can raise your stock price is core-everything else is context.
For such activities, the goal is to differentiate as much as possible and to assign one's best resources to that challenge. By contrast, every other activity in the corporation-and almost certainly this is the bulk of all activities-is not core. It is context. The goal with context is to execute