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Summary: Great Read But Technical Information May Annoy Some Readers
Review: As an investor, programmer, and software end user familiar with Netscape's history and technologies, I found this book to be very enjoyable and well-written. However, many non-technical readers not familiar with or interested in software development may grow tired of the book's extensive information on Netscape's design and development strategies.
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Summary: Nasty Microsoft
Review: Firstly, I love Netscape and dislike Microsoft - so I'm a biased reader. However, this is well written and well researched book. It tells the story essentially without preference. Both Netscape and Microsoft made mistakes and this book is fair in presenting both arguements - though it does concentrate on Netscape, but that is where the lessons came from and who it was that took the battle to Microsoft. Get it and read it!
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Summary: Now I understand what happened to Netscape!
Review: I found their description of the evolving routines at Netscape (and Microsoft) amazingly complete for researchers who had to do the job "after the fact." Indeed, it reads like an ethnography, which I think is the highest compliment I can pay a book that depended on interviews with key participants, rather than actually sitting in on meetings. They really captured the tension, ambiguity, and uncertainty involved in a high growth start up.The book fits very well with an evolutionary view of how routines & bundles of routines develop within organizations. I recommend it to people interested in evolutionary theory. The authors supply a cold dose of reality for anyone who thinks that managing a knowledge intensive high growth start is easy!
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Summary: Now I understand what happened to Netscape!
Review: I found their description of the evolving routines at Netscape (and Microsoft) amazingly complete for researchers who had to do the job "after the fact." Indeed, it reads like an ethnography, which I think is the highest compliment I can pay a book that depended on interviews with key participants, rather than actually sitting in on meetings. They really captured the tension, ambiguity, and uncertainty involved in a high growth start up. The book fits very well with an evolutionary view of how routines & bundles of routines develop within organizations. I recommend it to people interested in evolutionary theory. The authors supply a cold dose of reality for anyone who thinks that managing a knowledge intensive high growth start is easy!
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Summary: A product manager's view
Review: I had bought this book about a year ago, but never got around to reading it until now. My mistake! This is an excellent chronology and analysis of Netscape's growth and the challenges it faced. The quotes from the interviews with many key people at Netscape, as well as people at Microsoft, joined with the authors' analysis was great. I found many, many analogies to Netscape's perdicament with my own challenges at work. I read "AOL.com" by Kara Swisher, which was a good chronology of AOL.com, but it's the analysis and chronology that really differentiates "Competing on Internet Time" from most other "high-tech" books.
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Summary: Excellent storyline! Valuable insights!
Review: I think Cusumano does a very good job at telling a compelling story but at the same time points out valuable lessons that I found very applicable towards my future business career. I especially enjoyed chapter 3 and 6.
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Summary: nice history but questionable premise
Review: I think that the book provides some nice history and 'insider information' on the startup of Netscape and the creation of its products. I find the premise that EVERYTHING that they did was in reaction to Micros~1 is rather dubious. The authors overuse of the cliche "...in a life and death struggle with Microsoft" is annoying. The fact is that Microsoft is irrelevant to innovation, the creation of the web browser, and the internet itself. What they are about is using their monopolistic/anti-competative practices to destroy real innovation. This book would have been worlds better if it focused more on Netscape and the development of its products (more like Tracey Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" (an excellent book BTW) and less on playing up the melodrama of its interactions with Monoposoft.
Rating:
Summary: nice history but questionable premise
Review: I think that the book provides some nice history and 'insider information' on the startup of Netscape and the creation of its products. I find the premise that EVERYTHING that they did was in reaction to Micros~1 is rather dubious. The authors overuse of the cliche "...in a life and death struggle with Microsoft" is annoying. The fact is that Microsoft is irrelevant to innovation, the creation of the web browser, and the internet itself. What they are about is using their monopolistic/anti-competative practices to destroy real innovation. This book would have been worlds better if it focused more on Netscape and the development of its products (more like Tracey Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" (an excellent book BTW) and less on playing up the melodrama of its interactions with Monoposoft.
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Summary: One of the all time excellent business books I have read
Review: It's simply amazing at the author duo's grasp and understanding of three broad level issues facing businesses everyday - business strategy, technology and competition. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
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Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Michael A. Cusumano and David B. Yoffie have written a play-by-play of the competition between Netscape and Microsoft in an enormously detailed book that became an instant classic. Adding to the insider scoop, the authors take the opportunity to show readers how they can apply the "lessons" from this historic corporate battle to their own businesses in the context of today's fast-paced world, which runs on "Internet time." Critically acclaimed, the book is filled with facts, figures, insights and strategies, and manages to do it all without drowning in tedium. We at getAbstract highly recommend this book to people in all business. It's exceptionally well written and flows like a good adventure saga, which it is. (getAbstract note: Despite its commendable Judo tactics, Netscape in late 1998 was acquired by America Online Inc. in a deal that was roundly viewed as a final victory for Microsoft in the browser war.)
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