“In the classic book How Will You Measure Your Life?, co-authors Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon frame the issue… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“Caring and a sense of purpose evoke better performance than pressure and fear. The idea that only obsessive egomaniacs can produce breakthroughs is nonsense.” — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“It is hard to find many better examples of values-first leadership than Ventura, California-based outdoor clothing company Patagonia. For more than 30 years, the… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“I suggest that you think about your customer’s journey as a unified experience that has three key phases: motivation, education, and adoption. Motivation refers… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“The idea of putting customers first and acting with integrity is gaining traction. Outdoor-gear retailer REI received adulation for adhering to its values when… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“When I talk about kindness in business, a few people scoff. They say, “Steve Jobs and the leaders at Apple created a pressure-cooker environment… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“For example, every year, I rent Intuit’s TurboTax so I can do my income taxes. I pay for something I only need for a… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“Charles Du designed NASA’s first iPhone app, an award winner and a huge hit with more than 10 million downloads. But he also faced… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“A great story about a big company’s ability to do this comes from one of the world’s biggest businesses, General Electric. I learned about… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“Product managers are the connection between customers and the engineers who build the product. You are a bridge between what customers say and what… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“Persson did not create Minecraft because he wanted to create a billion-dollar company; he loved video games and kept his day job while developing… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“There are many ways to earn the love of employees. Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of multi-billion dollar yogurt maker Chobani, made headlines when he awarded… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“Harvard economist Theodore Levitt was the first authority to write about what he called the total product.2 A total product has four dimensions that… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
![“Persson did not create Minecraft because he wanted to create a billion-dollar company; he loved video games and kept his day job while developing it. When the game soared in popularity, he started a company, Mojang, with some of the profits, but kept it small, with just 12 employees. Even with zero dollars spent on marketing and no user instructions, Minecraft grew exponentially, flying past the 100 million registered user mark in 2014 based largely on word of mouth.2 Players shared user-generated extras like modifications (“mods”) and custom maps with each other, and the game caught on not only with children but their parents and even educators. Still, Persson avoided the valuation game, refusing an investment offer from former Facebook president Sean Parker. Finally, he and his co-founders sold Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, a fortune built on one man’s focus on creating something that people loved.3 On the other end of the spectrum is Zynga, one of the fastest startups ever to reach a $1 billion valuation.4 The social game developer had its first hit in 2009 with FarmVille. Next came Zynga’s partnership with Facebook that turned into a growth engine. The company began trading on the NASDAQ in December 2011 and had 253 million active users per month as late as the first quarter of 2013.5 Then the relationship with Facebook ended and the wheels started coming off. Flush with IPO cash, Zynga started exhibiting all the symptoms of ego-driven, grow-at-any-cost syndrome. They moved into a $228 million headquarters in San Francisco. They began hastily acquiring companies like NaturalMotion, Newtoy, and Area/Code. They infuriated customers by launching new games without sufficient testing and filling them with scripts that signed players up for unwanted subscriptions and services. When customer outrage went viral, instead of focusing on building better products, Zynga hired a behavioral psychologist to try to trick customers into loving its games.6 In a 2009 speech at Startup@Berkeley, CEO Mark Pincus said, “I funded [Zynga] myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to just get revenues right away. I mean, we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar, which . . . I downloaded it once — I couldn’t get rid of it. We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business.”7 By the spring of 2016, Zynga had laid off about 18 percent of its workforce and its share price had declined from $14.50 in 2012 to about $2.50.” quote by Brian de Haaff](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/77b/brian-de-haaff-20655_business_persson-did-not-create-minecraft-because_891897.jpg)
