Predicting The Turn: The High Stakes Game of Business Between Startups and Blue Chips
Last spring, I made the decision that I was going to write a book. Since I started blogging at Hard Knox Life in 2007, several people had encouraged me to try my hand at being a published author. While it was something I wanted to do for my bucket list, it also seemed like such a time consuming project that I didn’t know how I would ever get started and find the time to finish.
That changed last year thanks to my amazing wife Cindy. Knowing I had always wanted to write a book, she took it on her own initiative to talk with a professor at the university where she works. He had published at least a half dozen books and seemed to have the formula figured out. One thing that he shared turned out to be the key to jump starting my own effort. He told Cindy that with every book, he always starts in the middle. Too often, authors get stuck writing that first chapter, which is really meant to be a preview of the entire book. Instead, he will start by writing an entire chapter in the middle, then moving on to the chapters before and after that. The final thing he does is write the first chapter, which allows him to truly summarize what the book is, not what he hoped it to be.
With that advice in hand, I sat down in April 2016 to try my hand at writing my first business book. The result is Predicting The Turn: The High Stakes Game of Business Between Startups and Blue Chips, which will be published on February 14, 2017 by Paramount Market Publishing.
As a brand marketer, venture investor, and startup advisor, I felt that I had an unique worldview into the changing relationship between startups and Fortune 500 companies. I wrote Predicting The Turn to be a rule book for a new game of high stakes business.
The term “high stakes” is most often associated with the card game of poker. In a parallel to poker, Blue Chips are now in a game of high stakes business with disruptive startups. In high stakes business, the rules and players of the game have changed. The game has become high stakes because these new players are not looking for just market share, they are looking to make your business obsolete. They want to take down the entire table.
Predicting The Turn is for every business executive that is sitting at this high stakes table. It is for those leaders dealing with buzzwords like disruption and innovation. It is for companies that are trying to determine how to compete with a new breed of competitors that are playing the game by entirely different set of rules.
If this sounds interesting, the book is available today for pre-orders on Amazon or directly from the publisher (with a discount on multiple copies). The website just launched today as well.
I am also going to be hitting the speaking circuit in support of the book with appearances at iMedia Brand Summit and SXSW Interactive. If your company or organization would be interested in having me give a talk on Predicting The Turn or a bulk order of the book, please do reach out at dave.knox@gmail.com.
“The sooner you stop fighting the present, the sooner you can get to work on figuring out the future.” — David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Ruby on Rails and Founder / CTO of Basecamp
