Silicon Gold Rush: The Next Generation of High-Tech ... (ISBN 0471246468)

Amazon.com Review:
The fortunes generated by America's technology companies--from Hewlett Packard to PeopleSoft--have created tremendous pressure to generate more fortunes. These financial windfalls have resulted from efforts to identify markets that haven't yet been served, create products for those markets, build a dominant position, and then maintain that market share by continually improving the original product while also pursuing new avenues of enrichment. Silicon Gold Rush looks at this new business model and the management style that makes it possible. Gone is hierarchical management. If a new idea can't be implemented until it's gone up a ladder of managers and committees, then there's no point in bothering; a competitor with less bureaucracy will beat you to the market with something similar. Besides flattening out management structures, high-tech companies have also created an entirely new take on employee relations. The engineer or programmer or salesperson walking out the door at the end of the day carries the future of the business in his or her head. Give that person a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum, and in a wink he or she is working for your competitor. Karen Southwick presents this new business paradigm in plain English, attaching useful, if sometimes bizarre, examples of how real companies deal with these issues. For example, a valued engineer at one company didn't like working in a cubicle--he needed a quieter space. To keep him happy, his company, Ipsilon Networks, built a roof over his cubicle, and gave him a door with a working doorbell. One can't imagine General Motors or Chase Manhattan Bank going this route, but who knows? This may be the model for 21st-century business, and companies that don't learn it could be doomed to the tar pits of commercial history. --Lou Schuler

Let me catch my breath:
There are enough self-proclaimed "management bestsellers," and this one is too effusive and devoid of original content, from the boxed pundit words of wisdom, to the "terrific" blurbs from the people glowingly spotlighted within. Southwick's myopia is perhaps best captured by her claim that "the Regis Touch" transformed Apple. Maybe it was too long ago to remember, but back then, having an actual product made a difference. The idea that things are now moving so fast that intellectual property doesn't matter any more is ludicrous. The work seems primarily descriptive, rather than prescriptive, making it ironically backward-looking, and already dated.

There are some valuable nuggets in this one:
Definitely worth a look. Well laid out easy to read with summaries from some of today's leading thinkers. OK Karen Southwick seems to be using her friends (just look at the back of High Noon to find the same names she cites as experts in this book). She cites the success of companies such as Cisco, 3Com and PeopleSoft, HP,Intel and Yahoo! There is a lot to learn from these masters (even if it is nothing more than no-one has the whole answer) and Southwick takes us on a journey from start-up, through to marketing (mind she she calls it)and to prospecting. The graphs at the end of her book even show you profiles of the qualities CEOs need to have at various stages of their careers. I like this book because it has great quotes, e.g. Differentiating your product from others is more important than having the better product, it covers a vast range of topics, it intergrates well with other material (e.g. the work of Geoffrey Moore) and it offers a number of warnings. Well worth having a good look at

Not relevant with all the hypes -- too general:
Being a person working in SF bay area, I quickly learned that this book was among the inferiors of the book on the Valley. The descriptions are too general -- the interviews were too shallow and no specific issues are presented in a clear-lighted manner. Good selections for books on the Valley I think is "Accidental Empires" by Cringely.

Insightful!:
In light of the recent declines in tech stocks, you must give author Karen Southwick credit - for the most part she's profiled companies that are still around, although they've taken some hits. Southwick synthesizes her observations of Silicon Valley over the last decade or so. She takes a broad and sustained look at the practices of such companies as Ascend, Audodesk, Ciena, Cisco, Crossworlds, Net Noir, Open Market, Peoplesoft, Yahoo and others. Using an anecdotal, feature-story style, Southwick dissects these firms, covering CEOs' personal histories, corporate funding and corporate culture - down to dress code and wilderness team-building exercises. Some stories aren't new (insiders know Yahoo's culture is wacky) and there are some small inaccuracies (i.e. you could challenge Crossworlds CEO Katrina Garnett's argument that turnover is still a massive problem). Nonetheless, whether you're an insider or just an observer seeking an overview of Silicon Valley and its players, we at getAbstract.com recommend this accessible, reader-friendly compilation.

A Couple Years Later, This Is Irrelevant:
This is a somewhat entertaining read if you can get over the basic fact that the information is outdated. Almost all of the statistics are from 1998 and some of the companies cited as future stars never realized their potential. It was relevant in 1999 but quickly lost all significance in the dot-com meltdown of 2000 that is still continuing as I write this in 2001. Dot-coms now require a path to profitability and companies just don't engage in the same behaviors any more. This books still has value for anyone wanting to know some historical background from the times of "irrational exhuberance" but the changes in business priorities that have taken place since this book was written have doomed it to irrelevance.