Who Influences Today’s Visionaries? Other Thought Leaders, That’s Who

Geoffrey Moore is one of America's most widely-read authors of business books. The man behind several best sellers, including "Crossing the Chasm," "Inside the Tornado," and "Living on the Fault Line," Moore has made a name for himself by recognizing trends first and analyzing them in a way that others may learn from his insights.

His latest mantra: corporations should give up trying to perfect non-core activities and instead outsource these basic functions, many of them in the computing realm, to capable third parties. He believes this could give rise to powerful service providers who eschew the ways of the 1970s and 1980s and not focus on mission critical functions, but rather perfunctory initiatives that solve immediate customer problems.

That's revolutionary, if not controversial thinking, by today's standards.

So where does Moore get his ideas? A combination of places, he says, including discussions with leading CEOs, consulting gigs which reveal to him volumes about the state of affairs inside high-tech companies today, and, of course, books penned by other thought leaders.

On Nov. 13, 2000, VARBusiness will unveil its list of leading Internet Visionaries for 2000. Moore is among those chosen this year. In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with senior executive editor T.C. Doyle, Moore discusses who is influencing him these days and why.

Listen in as Moore describes his reading list, which includes everything from "The Innovator's Dilemma" to "Harry Potter."

Moore's complete reading list is featured below:

"The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail," by Clayton M. Christensen

"Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition," by Adrian J. Slywotzky

"The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference," by Malcolm Gladwell

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," by J. K. Rowling

"Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers," by Seth Godin

"Enterprise One to One: Tools for Competing in the Interactive Age," by Don Peppers, Martha Rogers