Chuck Wall’s book Customer CEO: How to Profit from the Power of Your Customers (Bibliomotion, 2013) is all about listening to the customer, with plenty of examples from established companies. While the tips may seem obvious (of course it makes sense to listen!), the chapters, examples, and advice make it easier to focus on each aspect of listening to customers so that you can shape your business around them.

Click on the image to view or download a larger version of my visual book summary/review.

Feel free to share this visual book review! (Creative Commons Attribution – I’d love it if you link back to this site and tell me about it. =) ) It should print out fine on letter-sized paper, too.

For more information or a free chapter, see Customer CEO Consulting (their blog has lots of examples).

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for review.

Check out my other visual book reviews!

The Culture Blueprint is an upcoming book that draws on lessons from Zappo’s corporate culture. It offers a mix of high-level advice as well as practical tips on how to influence your company’s culture and help your company be more effective. I liked the chapter on implementation, which includes a sample conversation showing how someone negotiated an experiment’s scope until the person got the resources and commitment needed. The tips are geared more towards medium- to large-sized companies, but even small business owners can benefit from the focus on values and stories.

Hope you find this visual summary useful! Click on the image to view a larger version, and feel free to share it with others. © 2013 Sacha Chua (Creative Commons Attribution Licence) – https://sachachua.com

Disclosure: I received a copy for review. If you have or know of an interesting, well-written book you’d like me to review, I accept requests.

Here’s my visual summary of Stephen M. Shapiro’s 2011 book Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition. It’s a good book for people handling innovation management in medium and large enterprises, although small business owners might still be able to apply a few tips like the one about getting out and observing your customers (Lessons from Indiana Jones, p.69) and when to buy/innovate/hire solutions (There’s no such thing as a “know-it-all”, p.42).

Click on the image to view a larger version, and feel free to share it under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence!

Check out my other sketchnotes and visual book notes!

This talk is part of the free MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 series (webcast and in-person session every Wednesday).

Feel free to share this! You can credit it as (c) 2012 Sacha Chua under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada licence.

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Check out my other ENT101 sketchnotes, or other sketchnotes and visual book notes!

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MaRS ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101 (#ENT 101)
ENTREPRENEURIAL MANAGEMENT – JON E. WORREN
Identify a sustainable business model with minimum waste
– Search
– Business Model
– Start-up
– Growth
– Execution
Customer Problem
Product solution ?
Business Model
Exit (it’s Okay!_
Evaluate
Yes O NO
assumptions
Test
Measure
Time studies
– Taylor
+ Work studies
Steel factories
Managers plan, workers work
Scientific management
Waste Time
Muda:
Hansei: learning
Kaizen: improvement
Jidoka: self-learning

TOYOTA PRODUCTION SYSTEM
agile Development Manifesto
Customer collaboration
Dev Dev Customer
Fewer documents
More conversations
iterations
Lean Thinking
From factories… to all businesses
customer value
Customer Development
Prioritizing business problems to solve
Customer acquisition
Scarcest resource, so understand the process
BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS
Value proposition –> core
What you offer
How you offer it
$ value/ benefit
how value is generated
difference from others
Summary
startups are different
focused on learning
$ most will bootstrap wade
Minimize risk by breaking up the process
Customer problem
Minimum viable product
Customer acquisition
Human element: have someone keep you accountable!
PROCESS> idea
Q&A: Don’t ask people to be your customers in your interview! asking w/o selling
LEAN STARTUP
Customer development + agile development
Build – Learn – Test – Measure
Lean Coffee, Toronto
Company building
Customer creation
Customer validation
Customer discovery