Ankur Sharma

Steve Jobs did it by building Apple aficionados . Marc Andreessen did that with Netscape when he forced people to look web browsing as an entertaining experience and not just "a geek activity". Sean Parker ,  Shawn Fanning and John Fanning did it with Napster when they changed the way people look at the music. They all are/were great product guys who knew what the tribe wanted even before the tribe had laid eyes on their products. They didn't do the focus group studies or market research to know the viability of their idea. They didn't show the stakeholders, mocks of their products so that they can "fill in the blanks". But is that the only way to leave the product legacy? I don't think so. Google products , passes through at least 3000 eyes, before they get released even for the Beta. Agree, their hit rate is low but that is because they churn products dime a dozen, an evidence of their agile environment - one of the most important as

I usually don't read a book just because everyone else is reading it - it makes me thinks conventionally, corrupts my thought process into more of a mass one, not the kind I usually love to live with. But if I can take the liberty of paraphrasing Steven Levy from " In The Plex ", with his new book, Walter Isaacson made me chase everyone elses' tail lights, and for the first time, I am kind of proud at being conventional. From today, I am going to start reading Steve Jobs in Hardcover, which has gotten shipped at a 50% pre-release discount, from Indiaplaza (Yes, Flipkart ; they pipped you this time!), a couple of days back.  Now if you please excuse me, I have to go to get some carrot juice for Mr. Jobs! It's Halloween after all!

I don't even need to speak how Apple changed Music Industry using iTunes. Most importantly, they tapped the long tail of songs which were almost impossible to sell for the Brand labels and impossible to buy for music affectionados. They end up contributing to roughly 10%-15% of the iTunes music sales now. To understand in more detail as to long tail has contributed to iTunes Marketplace , check out Ryan Hupfer 's graph.    In India, a similar effort in now being forged by Sony Mix , the new music channel by Multi Screen Media Pvt. Ltd. (a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment ). In their "About Us" they explain their product positioning as "Moving into the gap created by erstwhile music channels rechristened as ‘youth channels’ and other music channels dishing out non-music content as interstitial programming, we are confident that viewers shall enjoy MIX as a channel that remains true to the music genre." A good stab at MTVs and Ch