Inside Intuit: How the Makers of Quicken Beat Microsoft and Revolutionized an Entire Industry [Hardcover]

The authors have done an outstanding job of building on that potentially fascinating subject matter by successfully capturing the key elements of how Intuit has continued to succeed as a business model innovator through four CEOs. I was especially pleased to see that the book captures the values that led to this innovation, the organizational and process methods used to stimulate and pursue the innovation, and the motivations of the key innovators.

In addition, the book moves down into the organization to capture the thoughts and emotions of many of the Intuit employees as it moved from its P&G style focus on customer needs to a broad-based expansion through acquisitions to a GE-style disciplined approach to achieve performance in key areas.

In fact, this book was so fine that I had to ask myself what was missing before I could spot any flaws. The only area where the book is a little light is in describing the details of how Intuit's software development changed over time, and what the lessons were. Now, don't mistake my point. There's plenty on that subject (especially when Intuit was a start-up), but there could have been more . . . if this book were to become a case history source on software engineering.

But no book can be everything to everyone, and currently there are few books that explain continuing business model innovation through generations of senior management. So Inside Intuit becomes a must read for those who want to master this critical leadership and management task.

By the way, Inside Intuit is a very apt title. The authors seem to have had unrestrained access to company insiders. The book comes away much richer as a result than any other Silicon Valley saga that I can remember reading. Most of those books focus on one to three people in the company, and leave it at that.

As I finished the book, I wondered what improvements in its continuing business model innovation Intuit will make next. I can hardly wait to find out!

I remember the first time I met Scott Cook. Leo Redmond, at the time managing the Intuit Supplies Group, and I had just finished lunch in Palo Alto. As we drove back to his office, we talked about Quicken and how it was the second product I bought for my first computer in early 1989 (the first was Sim City). Leo said that he'd like me to tell Scott about it. Scott was excited - "You have five years of Quicken data?" He told me to install the latest Quicken beta as soon as I got home - he wanted to know how it handled large data files (mine was over two megabytes at the time). That was nearly ten years ago.

What an experience! Having been hired by Evy Chipman in late 1988 and working closely with every top-echelon executive on the ChipSoft side (Gaylord, Harris, Gleicher, Lane), I never thought I'd be so intimidated - stammering - as I chatted briefly with Scott in his office.

Reading Inside Intuit brings you into Scott's (and many others) office - you are in the presence of greatness when you read this book.

It provides entertaining examples where the company did right by customers and did right by its employees. In particular, the authors focus on Intuit's strong customer oriented culture and its extensive user testing to make their software easy to use.
The Intuit story is told chronologically covering Intuit's conception to the present . Probably since the authors have a marketing background, there is a lot of coverage on marketing roll-outs, pricing strategies, and branding. I would have liked to read more on their engineering strategies. This really is limited to stories of engineers pulling all-nighters and a focus on usability testing. Not much insight is given on how they actually develop award winning software. There is interesting management insight to current CEO Bennett, and how he brought more discipline and metric focus to the organization. The authors had access to all of the key Intuit players , and Intuit's vision, mission and operating values statement makes for an insightful read in the appendix.