Customer Reviews

The Power of Unfair Advantage: How to Create It, Build it, and Use It to Maximum Effect

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Yes, there is an element of CEO / Venture Capitalist / etc. in this book, and while that crowd may constitute a large SEGMENT of the audience, there is valuable information here for sole proprietors, small business owners, and others. PERFECT example: Page 122, "Flanking." Nesheim discusses the need to roll out your product or service in an "uncontested area," stating "If there is an entrenched leader of the market you are planning on dominating, you are too late and have nothing to flank into...The only thing left is to try a better, faster, cheaper product for the existing market. But that has virtually no chance of winning." Anyone who passes this book by on the premise that it is for CEOs and their ilk is making a big, big mistake if they want to succeed in their own business. There are additional chapters on business development, marketing, sales...all written by a guy who witnessed "Silicon Valley" from the ground up. If more small business owners read well-written business books like this one, fewer small businesses would have "going out of business" sales.

After reading this book it is very apparent that the concept of 'Unfair Advantage' is the single most important concept for anyone starting anything; whether it be a start up or a new product/project within an existing organization.
If John's first book successfully maps out what needs to be accomplished to successfully take an idea to an IPO, this book reorganizes all this info and more around the important concept of Unfair Advantage. His book is also a must read for anyone attempting to write a world class business plan. Implementing what I learned from Nesheim, I was able to get comments such as "one of the best business plans I've ever seen" from a top silicon valley VC partner.

I would like to personally thank John Nesheim for instilling in me the spirit of entrepreuneurship, and what I have learned from his teachings and books have been an invaluable help in taking me as far as I have in the world of high tech start up.

John's latest book is a must read for any CEO or senior executive of an early stage company. It encompasses the most comprehensive recipe for an organization to gain a competitive advantage. I found the concepts covered to be very practical, actionable, and applicable to organizations of any size.

Of course, one of John's passions has been eary stage companies, and therefore the book is the best I've read covering the process from founding of the enterprise, to developing of a busines plan, to securing funding, to executing the business plan - with a focus on building a competitive advantage from the ground up.

I am a long time fan of John Nesheim, and I highly recommend this book. I was a student of his at Cornell, and this book does a great job detailing his lectures.

In the early days of founding SightSpeed, I sought out John's advise with some cool new technology developed at in Cornell's engineering department. He listened to what we were looking at, and said (paraphrasing) "A technology is not a business, use the great technology as a way to build a business". That advice is was extremely important to getting our company off the ground and developing our business model. John expands greatly on that concept (page 163) and others in this book.

Reading his book has been a wonderful reminder of the fundamental elements of developing our business. Now that I have finished reading it, I am making it mandatory reading for the rest of my management team.

Excellent book, I teach technology and creative entrepreneurship at the University of Edinburgh under the Edinburgh-Stanford Link programme. Most of my students are MSc or Ph.D.s in the arts and sciences. It has really helped explained how to build competitive advantage in the short and long term, and I consider this crucial as a learning for my students. I am using it during this academic year as an optional read for students; next academic year I plan to make it required. John was also a Professor of mine at Cornell (MBA) and is an excellent teacher as well, BTW.

John Nesheim captures the essence of the foundation for success in high growth companies typical of the venture capital industry. "Unfair Advantage" is all about attractiveness to the customer and competitive advantage. In our VC investing practice at Canaan Partners, we constantly evaluate our current and prospective portfolio companies in terms of uniqueness and value proposition. John flushes out those notions and is right on the money. Required reading for all aspiring entrepreneurs.

So many business and technology books get bogged down in information we've heard before, just repackaged. John's book does a couple of things different. First, the title has served me well since I first read this book. It is so easy to get caught up in good ideas and forget that your ideas (and business) needs a strategic advantage. If you find, and leverage, the advantage well, then you succeed.

The book also walks through real-life examples. It has a technology-slant (which is natural considering the author's background), so it may not seem a natural read for everyone (thus 4 stars instead of 5). However, it is on my recommended reading list for all entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs.

I have not read the book, but this looks as if it's a much more detailed version of many of the lectures that he delivered during his time teaching at Cornell. The lectures were so good that just based on those I will be buying the book.

His writing and lecturing has a consistent point- to teach you to create businesses and positions that are profitable. I can't say that I've started the next Microsoft because of him, but he has been an influence on me in setting up small blogs as businesses that pay my bills with no more effort from me than a few hours of truly thinking through each blog's business plan. The latest one has been doing well within only a few weeks of being opened ( <A HREF="http://www.musiccherry.com" TARGET="_blank">MusicCherry.com</A> ), and Nesheim's classes have made it easier for me to do this. Since his newest book seems to follow the same pattern as his classes, I would expect to be just as helpful.

it dosent' teach you anything, if you want to waste money
buy this book, if you want to learn something, anything, buy another book