Yesterday was also a crazy day. I had the opportunity to meet Peter Hildick-Smith, the CEO and founder of Codex group. We discussed publishing, Amazon and marketing. Peter has been working for the past ten years with publishers to provide them with market research and marketing analytics after a successful career at GE and Bertelsmann. I also sat with Steve Kobrin, the publisher of the Wharton Digital Publishing to discuss the school strategy on book publishing.
Despite this busy schedule and thanks to the commute to New York by bus I had the time to read two books.
Despite this busy schedule and thanks to the commute to New York by bus I had the time to read two books.
The first one is Customer Centricity written by Peter Fader. Peter, a marketing professor at Wharton, is a specialist of customer analytics and has spent his academic years on research on customer data and statistical models. Unfortunately none of his research is reflected in this book. Peter Fader defines customer centricity as a strategy that aligns a company's development and delivery of its products/services with the current/future needs of a select set of customers. We are more familiar with the product-centric model, the best example of this strategy being Apple. The authors defends his theory that customer-centric companies will be the ones which will enjoy the maximum growth and generate the most value for their shareholders in the years to come. However transitioning from a product-centric to a customer-centric company is a difficult process as it requires huge changes of the financial and organizational company structure. While I found the thesis interesting, I could not find enough evidence in the book to support the author's point of view. Customer centricity lacks terribly of precise facts (except the Nordstrom example that appears 5 times in the first 40% of the book) and numerical data. While I appreciate that the author wanted to make his work accessible outside an academic circle, it does not mean that casual readers do not deserve to be presented with some rigorous analysis.
Author: Peter Fader
Publisher: Wharton Digital publishing
Author: Peter Fader
Publisher: Wharton Digital publishing
My second choice of the book was driven by the question I mentioned in my Day 24 post. What kind of books does a 12-13y old girl enjoy reading? I borrowed Princess Academy, a New York times bestseller for kids according to the Barnes & Noble website. What can I say? I did not like it but at the same time I am not in the target age, though I secretly hope that 12y old girls actually prefer more complex books.
Miri lives with her family on Mount Eskel, a remote part of the Danlan kingdom. Families in this remote village live thanks to the linder, a very precious building material they extract from quarries. One day a messenger comes and announces that the future Prince's bride will be chosen among Mount Eskel's girls. To prepare for the Prince's arrival and choice, all the girls between twelve and seventeen are sent to an Academy to learn how to become a princess. They will be taught how to read, dance, make nice conversations and some rudiments of diplomacy and business knowledge.
Miri is a nice girl, the story is naive, full of good sentiments and moral lessons like "Education is really good", "Love triumphs of everything", a " To be rich is meaningless without love". As I said above I can't really blame the book or the author, after all these are important messages to convey to 12y old kids. At the same time, these kids have access to YouTube, Facebook and a whole online world that makes this book look satirical with all its sweetness and good sentiments.
Now I have thrown many stones, I have to confess that at this age my favorite book was the Little House series by Laura Ingalls. A series of books full of naive, good sentiments and moral lessons.... finally maybe 12y old kids in 2014 are not that different from 12y old kids in 1996.
Author: Shannon Hale
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Miri lives with her family on Mount Eskel, a remote part of the Danlan kingdom. Families in this remote village live thanks to the linder, a very precious building material they extract from quarries. One day a messenger comes and announces that the future Prince's bride will be chosen among Mount Eskel's girls. To prepare for the Prince's arrival and choice, all the girls between twelve and seventeen are sent to an Academy to learn how to become a princess. They will be taught how to read, dance, make nice conversations and some rudiments of diplomacy and business knowledge.
Miri is a nice girl, the story is naive, full of good sentiments and moral lessons like "Education is really good", "Love triumphs of everything", a " To be rich is meaningless without love". As I said above I can't really blame the book or the author, after all these are important messages to convey to 12y old kids. At the same time, these kids have access to YouTube, Facebook and a whole online world that makes this book look satirical with all its sweetness and good sentiments.
Now I have thrown many stones, I have to confess that at this age my favorite book was the Little House series by Laura Ingalls. A series of books full of naive, good sentiments and moral lessons.... finally maybe 12y old kids in 2014 are not that different from 12y old kids in 1996.
Author: Shannon Hale
Publisher: Bloomsbury