Peter Thiel is one of the most successful serial entrepreneurs of our generation and his “Zero to One” is intended to be a guidebook to any entrepreneur. Thiel’s reasoning is practical and based on solid analytics, sometimes contradicting to popular believes. The book starts with one of them. Popular believe is globalization is more important for a better future (in business scenario), i.e. taking an existing technology and scaling up. The writer’s argued that without original innovation or technology, globalization is not sustainable. He referred globalisation as taking from 1 to n (horizontal growth) and technology as taking from 0 to 1 (vertical growth).

“Zero to one” is not only about business strategies but also a reflection of capitalism and 21^st century world economy, sometimes offering hindsight. The author points out 4 lessons learnt for the Dotcom Boom.

1. Make incremental growth:
2. Stay lean and flexible:
3. Improve on the competition
4. Focus on the product, not sales

Thiel argues in favour of creative monopoly as start-up’s ambition rather than having a competitive edge over other. This is in tuned to changing an industry like Apple, Google, Tesla etc or simply put taking things from “Zero to One”. To quote from the book “More than anything else, competition is an ideology- the ideology- that pervades our society and distorts our thinking “. He isn’t a firm believer of luck and in the chapter “you are not a lottery ticket” He breaks down the whole idea of viewing success as a matter of chance into different eras and world economy. The concept is then analysed in different lights like optimistic philosophy, national policy etc. This can be a little more detailed than needed for a regular reader, but to put in a nutshell, Thiel’s book is not just another inspirational bible for dreamers but a bluebook for understanding market dynamics, learning curve of an entrepreneur. Every idea is practical, thought provoking, presented with stunning clarity and backed up with extreme detailing.

There are so many parameters Thiel projected which are important to build a successful company. Being one of the most prominent VC’s himself, the author talks about the power game of venture capitalist funding. The Relationship between the co- founders/early employees, importance of recruiting the right ones and company culture these are the foundation of a good company. Thiel explains why nerds hate marketing and why marketing is as important as building the product. The book is divided to different chapters touching different aspects of start up journey and parameters, be it the psychology of successful start up founder or identifying the need of the hour. Most importantly there is something to learn for everyone who is a part of the business ecosystem. It starts with a fundamental question “what important company is no one building?” and the whole journey is to figure out the essence or the characteristics of building a successful important company.

But being a brisence of “zero to one”. In between the sharp analytics of business data and tactics, Thiel’s passion for shaping the future, predicting possibilities is what inspires the reader to dream more. The author emphasises on the importance of searching for secrets, creating a leap in technology and discovering the unknown possibilities in multiple occasions. The conclusion of the book is actually a question, “singularity or stagnation? “Where Thiel discusses the future of mankind. But it’s the future generation of the entrepreneurs who will have the responsibility to shape it better. This book helps the reader to realise that very deep connection that the product or company he builds, can make a difference to shape the future and change the world. Metaphorically this is passing the button from one generation of dreamers to the next to carry forward the legacy.

Reference Heading                                                                  Personal Heading

Title:  What is your social media strategy?                         Name: Khusubu Agrawalla

Author: H. James Wilson, PJ Guinan, Salvatore Parise,

and Bruce D. Weinberg                                                          Date Submitted:16/11/2015

Source: Harvard Business Review                                        Course: Internet Marketing

Date:    August 2011                                                               Assignment: Article Review

In the recent years the trends in social media marketing has picked up rapidly. Every organisation is fighting hard for the top place on the Google Search page rankings or the number of Facebook page likes or a huge number of followers & retweets on twitter page or number of YouTube views or many other and their counts. Internet and online connectivity has made it very easy for Big Companies to reach their customers. In this race to maximize their reach, companies often forget to plan out their social media strategy. It is very important to have a strategy that is aligned with the organisational strategy. To understand different organisational strategy, the team in the article conducted a survey on more than 1100 businesses across different industries and conducted 70 in person interviews of different executives who are in social media initiative domain for their organisation. The research found four different strategies based on a company’s tolerance for uncertain outcomes and the level of results sought.

Predictive Practitioner: This is a strategy where the organisation knows what outcome parameters they are looking for, which can be measured with established tools. There is less uncertainty about the result. It works well for the organisations with little cross-functional coordination among different projects. Each project has a clear business objective so that the social media campaign of one project has least impact on other projects. For example Clorox used social media to create a virtual R&D center where they asked different questions to the customer regarding their product and incentive them based on the quality of response. This allowed Clorox to get direct consumer insight. One success story of social media use where Clorox posted a question about a specific compound for its salad dressings. Five quality responses came in quickly and the company got the solution in a day. As a reward they brought the responder to the product development process.

Creative Experimenter: The creative experimenter embraces uncertainty. They run a pilot project to test the water and learn from the mistakes. They are not worried much about the results and predefined outcomes. Here the organisations overall objective is to learn from social media projects by listening to the customer and employees from resulting conversations. For example the IT services giant EMC ran a pilot run in an effort to reduce the use of outside contractors by introducing one platform called EMC/ONE that helped employees network and connect on projects. If the project had failed then they would have tried some other approach. But EMC/ONE was a success and it generated more than $40 million in savings.

Social Media Champion: Organisations which follow this strategy launch large initiatives designed for predictable outcomes. In such organisations there is a centralized group dedicated towards coordinating and managing social media projects across all departments and functions. This centralized group develops policies and guidelines for social media champions. They involve different stake holders to promote and participate in social media projects. This group shares the best practices and learning from different projects throughout the organisation. Ford’s 2009 Fiesta Movement Campaign is a successful example of such strategy. Ford lent 100 Fiestas for six months to recipients who would use social media to discuss their experiences. Within six months the contestants had posted more than 60,000 items, which garnered millions of clicks, 4.3 million YouTube Views as a result the company gained 37% prelaunch brand awareness rate. This campaign also generated 50,000 sales leads to new customers. This scale of result is possible in case of traditional campaigning after spending tens of millions dollar.

Social Media Transformer: This approach enables companies to improve the way they do business. They try to incorporate the changing technology in their day to day activities of the business for both internal and external stake holders. They tightly integrate the social media technologies with how they learn and work. For example Cisco launched Integrated Workforce Experience (IWE), a social business platform to facilitate internal and external collaboration and decentralize decision making. Cisco also makes excellent use of video by conducting most trainings and meeting by using video technology. All these technological advancements accelerated “time to trust” among Cisco’s stakeholders.  It enabled them of quick knowledge sharing within the organisation across different geographical locations.

I choose to review this article because it raised the fundamental question that every executive should think before deciding his/her organisation’s social media strategy. Every business decision should have some strategy and the author tried to implement this concept in social media field. Social media is not only Facebook, twitter or similar forums. It is also about creating a social connection among the employees. Every organisation has limited resources for each activity, so it is very vital for them to choose the strategy where they want to use their resources rather than spending randomly on different social media. The article also emphasizes on how the company’s strategies should not only adopt today’s social media technologies but also it should guide managers to adapt to future technological platforms. To avoid the ambiguity about the strategy the author suggests a matrix with few question. The executives can answer these questions in the matrix to know more about their strategy. The author did a very good job in keeping his thoughts precise and to the point. In each strategy he stated a strong examples to illustrate his point. Many companies make a good start in adopting the social media but due to lack of strategy they fail to ramp up the efforts in long run. So it is the responsibility of the manager to think about both the long term and the short term effects of any strategy. I will highly recommend to each executive to think about the above strategies before taking any social media decision.

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