Book Summaries – Business Strategy & Strategic Management
Summarized into 8 pages with COMPLIMENTARY Audio MP3
Rethink
Ric Merrifield
It’s the trap that ensnares virtually every business. We focus on process: “how” we’re doing the job. And we forget about the bigger issue: “what” we are doing and “why” we’re doing it. That’s why we are leaving so much value on the table. In Rethink, business architect Ric Merrifield exposes this problem with vivid examples and introduces breakthrough techniques for overcoming it.
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Chaotics
Philip Kotler, John A. Caslione
As the fallout from the financial meltdown of 2008 grows progressively worse, companies, industries, and entire markets cling precariously to life or have ceased to exist altogether. And the turbulence may not be over anytime soon. Here noted business strategists Kotler and Casilone argue that these troubled times are not an aberration, but the new face of normal. Chaotics teaches how to be prepared for –– and thrive in –– this New Age of Turbulence.
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Intellectual Property
Paul Goldstein
Intellectual property. The term itself suggests the nature of the challenge. How can a product of the mind become the subject of precise, bound property rights? Elusive as intellectual property boundaries are, the business value they secure are enormous, according to author Paul Goldstein.
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The New Age of Innovation
C. K. Prahalad, M. S. Krishnan
In the new age of innovation and corporate growth, business processes must be able to smoothly connect consumers and resources and at the same time manage the necessities that ensure efficiency and flexibility. Managers must become skilled at real-time actions that are event and consumer specific. Leaders will need to imagine and inspire. To accomplish the transformation that companies are faced with in order to compete globally, Prahalad and Krishnan offer a strategic plan.
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Outsmart!
Jim Champy
Jim Champy, dubbed one of the leading management and business thinkers of our time, identifies the counterintuitive lessons learned by companies that have been able to sustain super-high growth for at least three years straight. Champy shares an inside look at the success factors associated with many of the companies that continue to outsmart their competition even in a tough marketplace.
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The Complexity Crisis
John L. Mariotti
Executives today face a crisis — a crisis of complexity. As you seek to expand profits, a number of new products, procedures and systems are created that, unexpectedly, stifle your bottom line. To this problem, Mariotti has the solution: simplify. In this far-reaching study, he shows corporate America that “keep it simple” is the way out of the Complexity Crisis.
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The Soul of the Corporation
Hamid Bouchikhi, John R. Kimberly
Drawing on real-life stories from the world’s most prominent companies, The Soul of the Corporation shows how identity can be an extraordinarily valuable asset — and how, if not managed properly, it can become a huge liability. Discover how your firm’s identity is related to — and different from — its organizational culture, brand positioning and reputation. Learn how to manage the unconscious shared beliefs that give your organization coherence.
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Corporate Agility
Charles E. Grantham, James P. Ware, Cory Williamson
In order to compete in the flat world –– where the rules are constantly changing –– businesses must be willing to embrace a new strategic model. This model needs to allow for the understanding of the evolving work force, the inception of new technologies, and the re-examination of work place structure. Corporate Agility provides the blueprint for this revolutionary move forward.
Charles E. Grantham, James P. Ware, Cory Williamson
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The Definitive Drucker
Elizabeth Haas Edersheim
Considered the father of modern management, Peter Drucker spent the last 16 months of his life speaking about the world of business with Edersheim, a respected management thinker in her own right. The Definitive Drucker provides his final thoughts about the development of modern business.
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Exceeding Customer Expectations
Kirk Kazanjian
While providing a thorough case study of the success of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Kazanjian also gives an in-depth look to the strategic management practices that have boosted the company to the top of its industry.
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Green to Gold
Daniel C. Esty, Andrew S. Winston
This book explores what every executive must know to manage today’s environmental challenges. Based on the authors’ years of experience and hundreds of interviews with corporate leaders around the world, the book shows how companies generate lasting value by building environmental thinking into their business strategies.
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Break From the Pack
Oren Harari
To excel in the cramped business world today, individuals and organizations must learn when to leave the herd behind and break from the pack with fresh ideas and ahead-of-the-game innovation. Harari provides a four-pronged process in Break from the Pack for moving into the lead and leaving competition behind, while providing lively examples through the “Madonna Effect” and the “Willie Nelson Principle.” In what Harari calls a “Copycat Economy,” it is essential to differentiate as well as dominate in the growing market in order to succeed.
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The Ten Faces of Innovation
Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman
Building on The Art of Innovation, which celebrated the work culture that distinguishes his high-profile, award-winning industrial design firm IDEO, Kelley and coauthor Littman demonstrate how a culture of continuous innovation and renewal can be nurtured and sustained in Ten Faces. The authors look at 10 personas in the workplace, such as anthropologists, who contribute insights by observing human behavior; experimenters, who try new things; hurdlers, who surmount obstacles; collaborators, who bring people together and get things done; and caregivers, who anticipate and meet customer needs.
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Satisfaction
Chris Denove, James D. Power IV
Despite claims otherwise, Denove and Power write, “Most organizations have not made a significant and sustained commitment to customer satisfaction.” As a result, these organizations are losing money. This isn’t just another book about customer satisfaction, it’s an unlocked vault on years of closely guarded research data, surveys and feedback collected by J.D. Power and Associates, a name synonymous with measuring customer satisfaction and improving the bottom line.
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The Triple Bottom Line
Andrew W. Savitz, Karl Weber
Author Andrew Savitz approaches the concept of sustainability in three-part harmony, with a look at how businesses prosper financially while protecting and renewing the social, environmental and economic resources they need. He says they can fail if they do not tend to all three, and his claims are not without merit. With an eye to the Fortune 100 companies leading this movement, The Triple Bottom Line approaches sustainability as a “win-win-win” prospect achievable in any industry.
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Dealing With Darwin
Geoffrey A. Moore
The Darwinian struggle to deliver profitable products and services ensues as competitive advantage gaps narrow. Geoffrey A. Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, looks at the challenges faced by today’s companies in this struggle. Moore gives advice to managers and leaders who need to understand their company’s role in its market ecosystem, along with what kind of differentiation will be most rewarded in the marketplace.
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The Well-Timed Strategy
Peter Navarro
It’s not enough to understand the business cycle and the industry cycle. In The Well-Timed Strategy, Peter Navarro discusses today’s unprecedented level of macroeconomic turbulence – from oil price hikes to drought and disease. Whether an executive, a strategist or an investor, Navarro provides the tools to align every facet of business strategy, tactics and operations to reflect changing business conditions. Keeping in mind finance, supply chains, production, marketing, HR and more, the author outlines ways to profit from the chaos of business cycle volatility by implementing the appropriate strategy.
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Blueprint to a Billion
David G. Thomson
Microsoft, Google and eBay did it. And in David G. Thomson’s Blueprint to a Billion, he will tell you how to turn billion-dollar ideas into billion-dollar businesses. Based on three years of in-depth research, Thomson provides an assessment of the success pattern common across a distinct group of 387 “Blueprint Companies” that went from an initial public offering since 1980 and achieved $1 billion in revenue. Rather than focusing on one unique company, Thomson focuses on a quantifiable, success-based pattern -- independent of economic cycles or industries -- that winning companies follow to produce admirable, desirable performance.
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Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars
Patrick Lencioni
In Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars, bestselling author and acclaimed management expert Patrick Lencioni presents a dynamic leadership fable that reveals how organizations can overcome the “silos” that divide work units and paralyze performance. Lencioni also offers solutions to a key leadership issue — the impact of turf wars and political infighting on organizational effectiveness. Written in the form of a realistic but fictional story, Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars tackles a tough business issue in both an entertaining and instructive way.
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The Next Global Stage
Kenichi Ohmae
A radically new world is taking shape from the ashes of yesterday’s nation-based economic world. To succeed, you must act on the global stage, leveraging radically new drivers of economic power and growth. In The Next Global Stage, legendary business strategist Kenichi Ohmae synthesizes today’s emerging trends into the first coherent view of tomorrow’s global economy — and its implications for politics, business and personal success.
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The Growth Gamble
Andrew Campbell, Robert Park
Conventional business wisdom dictates that companies should focus their sights on growth. But growth is no certain thing, say the authors of The Growth Gamble. Not all companies are built for rapid growth: Their markets are unsteady or extremely competitive, their infrastructure is not sufficiently flexible, or they don’t have the quality or quantity of people to lend to the effort. For these companies, a slow or steady growth curve, over years or even decades, is the healthiest option. With The Growth Gamble and its invaluable New Businesses Traffic Lights Toolkit, businesses have what they need to grow smartly.
