I’ve been working on the proofs of Creative Disruption, this week. This is when the book comes back all nicely laid out, and you are advices to only make minor adjustments. Which I’m kind of doing, but reading back a lot of my prose needs a little more than ‘minor adjustments’.
The flaws in my book are all too visible as I read it. But so, fortunately, are some of the strengths. I’m not the world’s greatest theoretician, but I can tell a pretty good story – and I’m pleased with the insights I’ve drawn from the IBM, Apple, HMV and Encyclopedia Britannica case histories.
I very deliberately didn’t do a whole section on newspapers; although towards the end I compare the adjacency strategies of the New York Times, Johnston Press [consolidate in print through geographic expansion]; Washington Post Company [move into Education and Cable], Naspers and Schibsted [build and buy real internet businesses]. Because ultimately, it is this strategy that dictates the financial framework that any newspaper business has to operate in.
I’m also pretty pleased with some of the things I’ve tackled about the factors you need for a successful transformation strategy – and my little spiel about ‘Denial, Delusion, Distraction and Bewilderment’. In the hands of a slightly more guru-like author, that could be the core of a book in its own right.
And there’s no section on paywalls – not least because it was such a live topic that anything I wrote would either have to be spectacularly couched, or end up completely out of date. I’ll return to the topic here, as I leave the world of book editing behind, and start to get back into my blogging stride towards the end of the Summer.
My biggest regret though is all about porn. With a bit more research, it could have been a great set of case histories, but in the end it was just a 350-word panel shoe-horned into the book in not quite the right place.
Anyway, enough chatting on – there is proof reading to be done..
