Customer Reviews

Hyperwars: 11 Essential Strategies for Survival and Profit in the Era of On-line Business

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bruce Judson and Kate Kelly live in the real world. I have a long commute, so I listen to many audio tapes. HyperWars is the only book I have found that directly confronts the real issues the Internet creates. As far as I can tell, everyone else glosses over what to do when the Internet creates a price war or when manufacturers start to go around retailers direct to the customer. Bruce Judson and Kate Kelly confront the issues head-on with relevant ideas and advice. This book is very different from the other "hot" Internet books. John Hagel's Net Worth is a fascinating discussion of infomediaries--which seems to be the hot topic right now. But, I read a magazine article where Hagel says that no "infomediaries exist today." Net Worth does not help me deal with today's real world issues like HyperWars. A second hot book is Kevin Kelley's New Rules for the New Economy. Kevin Kelley is in the clouds while HyperWars is firmly planted on Earth. Kevin Kelley says success comes from giving eveything away free. Bruce Judson and Kate Kelly provide a much better, relevant discussion of how to use "free" to create a business. Unlike Kevin Kelley, they don't not waive a magic wand and gloss over the difficulties of converting customers from "free" to "paying".

Filled with simple, easy-to-grasp advice, backed up with many real-world examples.

Some readers will be disappointed in this book because it is not a how-to guide to making a website or marketing products on the Net. But it IS a comprehensive strategy guide for managers who want to see if (and how) the Internet can help their business. This book was an invaluable help to me during my own research.

I have recommended, and bought, this book for many of my friends. It has very practical and useful ideas of how to leverage the Internet to produce incremental sales and reduce operational costs. Must read if you have, or don't have, an Internet business strategy.

Hyperwars is right on target with today's ecommerce trend, extremely insightful, and very well written. As an internet-related company, we have made Hyperwars our handbook and required reading by all employees.

This is a good book to skim through, to make sure you have your bases covered. Void of any major new insights.

This book is about business, not the internet. This book offers eleven strategies for survival and profit in the era of online businesses. It is written by businesspeople for businesspeople.

The realm of e-commerce provides all companies with an environment where the survival of the fittest is the golden rule. The authors see the internet as providing challenges to all businesses, regardless of how well established or large these businesses may be.

This book works to explain these eleven strategies:

1. Use the internet as the World's Most Sophisticated Telephone.

2. Speed is everything. Buy resources, find partnerships.

3. Cut costs and increase efficiency using the web.

4. A great product today requires something more.

5. Get personal. Learn to recommend and to customize.

6. Create the "Total Solution."

7. Market relentlessly through the internet.

8. The Magic is Free. Understand the importance of free value-adding offers. Also know when not to offer free products or services.

9. Business plans are more essential than ever.

10. Flexibility is key. Companies must be prepared to change at a moments notice.

11. Never stop looking over your shoulder.

What a disappointment! I could not beleive that this was actually written in 1999. Unless you have been asleep for a couple of years most of the stuff in this tape would be familiar.

The tape starts with a few bits of information such as the quote from Fortune: "On the web you are either fast, or last." And then goes on to talk about channel conflict stating that this is the most widely reported problem that businesses face. Well neither the author nor these businesspeople have read customers.com because Patricia Seybold has a solution (in fact so does Judson in strategy 10).

I did not like his telephone analogy for the web. Trouble always comes when something new is described using nice comfortable familiar concepts. His strategies are on the whole disappointingly stale: speed, flexibility, efficiency, personal service and paranoia. Judson seems to borrow his ideas from everyone (including Grove and Gates).

However, if you have been asleep for the last two years, you are panicking because you are about to be disintermediated and you want a primer in e-commerce, this is probably for you.

Why three stars? Well I did not throw it out the car and it did remind me of everything I had heard before.

It took me a while to track down this book......and in all honesty the effort wasn't worth it.

After having just read Customers.com and Enterprise.com I was ready for another gripping book on how the Internet is changing our everyday lives and what we should expect in the future.

Reading Hyperwars took be back a couple of years. Had this book been written in 1996 it would have been a blockbuster. Judson doesn't reveal anything new or provide any real glimpses into the future.

His style of writing tends to plod through and contain continual repetitions, almost to the point where I found myself knowing what was coming next.

If you consider yourself a bit of a visionary or have been involved with the Internet for a year or two and understand the basic fundamentals then stay away from this book.

It is a shame that this book is not specifically being marketed as a tool for non-profit managers. Leaders of this dynamic and rapidly growing sector will find "Hyperwars" as useful as business managers. Perhaps even more so, since the potential of the internet for more effective marketing and more efficient management is even greater for non-profit than business entrepreneurs.

In HyperWars, Judson and Kelly describe a rapidly changing landscape of doing business online with compelling examples of how the day to day trenches operate. Further, they penetrate some of the critical issues which will reshape the retailer- consumer supply chain in the future.