Competing on the Basis of Speed

Concept of "fast companies":
Dell: through speed - significant cost advantage due to low cost infrastructure. They have cheap price per component not because they buy cheaper - they buy at same price of course, but cheaper surrounding infrastructure. (1:25)
Toyota: Brought Prius from concept to market in 15 months
Google: competes on speed in software dev area

Competing on basis of speed gives : 1) a significant competitive advantage, and 2) a large barrier to entry - companies need to catch up.

Things that kill speed:
complexity
3 faces of complexity

1. waste: anything that depletes resources/effort/space/money - keep it simple
2. Inconsistency: uneven, unbalanced, etc - make it flawless
3. overload: excessive or unreasonable burden - make it flow

1) waste
Keep common infrastructure
achitecture/convention/tools
keep simplifying the code via refactoring

a dev process that anticipates change will result in software that tolerates change

Toyota's design process:
"set based design" (9:45)
They have 10 engines and pick one before production - not use one and keep making changes.
Makes decision as late as possible

Make decisions reversible whenever possible
-when change creates complexity, refactor

Paused at 13:00... fascinating, but getting sleepy...

Watch: google video

Details on the gootube deal...

Long, but interesting read. Posted by anonymous source, but it definately points out a valid strategy.

First, google buys youtube.

500 mil of purchase goes to settling lawsuits (50m per media giant).
Within the 50 mil, google requires 2 things:
1. Media giants look the other way for 6 months while google fixes a copyright infringment scheme for youtube - this includes a middleground so that youtube can still offer copyright material (since that IS the real reason why video sites grow so quickly).
2. Media giants create lawsuits for youtube competitors (and by now, this has already taken place)

Causes:
Cause from #1: Youtube flurishes for another 6 months (paraphrase: "Every day that youtube can avoid copyrights is another day youtube grows")
Cause from #2: Youtube competitors will not grow in popularity, nor will they recieve venture capital.

End result:
Youtube will grow, all else will fail. Google is happy. Youtube FTW.