This book was published in 2011 and the author is Geoffrey A. Moore who wrote “Crossing the Chasm” and “Dealing with Darwin“.

“Escape velocity” refers to the velocity needed for an escape for a rocket to escape from Earth’s gravity. It’s likened to strategic planning to overcome resistance and break away from past practices.

We can learn the framework to make a strategic decision. There are 5 types of economic power.

Category power

Reengineering Portfolio Management

This is about product category portfolio management. The key factor is the market growth rate is related to the category we are living in. If our category has a 30% growth rate, everyone may be able to grow even if we can’t beat our competitor. competitor. But if the growth rate of our category is 4%, it’s very difficult to grow and so we need to decide if we sell the business unit of the low growth rate business or if our market share is big enough, we can stay in that category.

The important thing is to pull out our resources from the low growth category and reinvest them into the high growth category. That’s category power. 

Company power

Making Asymmetrical Bets

This is about the power of the company if we can get No.1 or No.2 market share in the category?
If the answer is No, we won’t play in this category. That could be the choice.
If the answer is Yes, our company can control the category and play well in it.

To be the top player in the category, leadership is more important than management to make a strategic decision to put more resources in the target category. This is done by leadership not by management. 

Market power

Capitalizing on Market in Transition 

This is about the market size of the target market segment.

The market segment within the category should be big enough to contribute to our company profit visibly and small enough to get top market share. So the market segment size should not be too big and too small. 

Offer power

Breaking the Ties That Bind

This is about the competitiveness of our offer related to our product and service. We need to manage the purpose of innovation such as achieving differentiation, competitive neutralization, and internal productivity respectively.

Execution power

Engineering the Escape

The execution is the most important part since it makes no sense if we can not execute the strategy even it’s excellent.

The execution power is different based on a business model such as “Volume operations” and “Complex systems”.  For example, “Complex Systems” businesses deliver value through playbooks which is a package of solutions to reproduce success with standard products. 

Thank you for reading this post.

If you want to listen to the author’s presentation, the Youtube link is here. This is also my recommendation and might be easier than reading the book!