Strategy & Competition Books

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

James C. Collins

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Collins Amazon Marketplace: 352 new & used starting at $6.73

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Leadership
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 686 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C. Edwards

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvard Business School Press Amazon Marketplace: 87 new & used starting at $9.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Systems & Planning

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 164 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Winning by not competing: a fresh approach to strategy Since the dawn of the industrial age, companies have engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation. Yet these hallmarks of competitive strategy are not the way to create profitable growth in the future. In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne argue that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries, the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors, but from creating “blue oceans”: untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Such strategic moves—which the authors call “value innovation”—create powerful leaps in value that often render rivals obsolete for more than a decade. Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any company can use to create and capture blue oceans. A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this book charts a bold new path to winning the future.

NLP: The New Technology of Achievement

NLP Comprehensive

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $9.71

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Business Life
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Personal Transformation

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

CLOYING, ANNOYING, AND CONDESCENDING 2 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

I am giving this book two stars- but I begrudge it the second one. It has to be two because it DOES contain the information I bought it for. But I wish I could in good conscience give it one single star- or fewer- because on nearly every page, there's something that makes me want to reach through the book and slap the writers.

I don't enjoy books that effuse with frothy enthusiasm so trillingly that it undercuts the information it's supposed to deliver. And I don't enjoy books where the authors seem to be addressing me and my curiosity about the topic in a sugary voice as if I am a Kindergartner.

So I am not enjoying this book. At all.

I wish that before I'd purchased this book I'd seen the dedication page. It reads: "Dedicated to the joyful heart and soaring spirit of every child reaching for a greater world, especially in yourself."

Now, friends- I sincerely hope your heart is joyful and that your spirit soars. But that sugary prose in the dedication would have tipped me off about what was ahead- and I'd have run for the hills. To get to the information, you have to deal with the authors achingly precious hopes for this book to change your life.

Ever have a cappucino that was all foam with only a little sip of coffee at the bottom of the cup? Remember how you raised the paper cup to your lips and there wasn't anything to swig? Remember the sense that you'd just been ripped off?

Yeah. It's a lot like that.

If you like non-fiction delivered to you like a bed-time story, maybe you'll like this book. But if not-- don't buy this book. Run very fast to the next selection.

If I can stop even one person from buying this book, it was worth my time to write this review.

Editorial Review:

NLP has already helped millions of people overcome fears, increase confidence, enrich relationships, and achieve greater sucess. Now the NLP Comprehensive Training Team has written a book that reveals how to use this breakthrough technology to achieve whatever you want.

Short for neuro-linguistic programming, NLP is a revolutionary approach to human communication and development. In NLP: The New Technology of Achievement, you'll be guided step-by-step through specific programs for learning the characeristics of top achievers and creating a blueprint for unlimited sucess. Plus, an all-new twenty-one-day program created especially for this book provides you with the essential skills you'll need to achieve peak performance in business and life.

The Toyota Way

Jeffrey Liker

Amazon Price: $18.45 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 74 new & used starting at $13.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Quality Control

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 81 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Lean Production 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"I have visited hundreds of companies and taught employees from over one thousand companies. I have compared notes with many of those I have taught. I have also visted a number of the U.S plants that were fortunate to have received assistance from TSSC, which has consistently helped companies achive a level of improvement like "Lean Company X". Unfortunately, I see a persistent trend in the inability of these companies to implement TPS and lean. Over time, the lean production line TSSC sets up degrades rather than improves...There is a "lean production cell" here and a pull system there and the time it takes to changeover a press to a new product has been reduced, but there is where the resemblance to an actual Toyota lean model ends."

Why has American Automotive technology slow to adopt the Toyota Way? Three forces: political protectism, cheap resources, and well established marketing channels. However, as fuel prices continue to escalate, innovative automotive solutions will be rewarded and brand will have less loyality. Toyota claims that their line workers are among the best and brightest minds and their ideas are used to solve problems.

TPS has potential. TPS advocates continual learning through eliminating waste, remove unnecessary labor, to see for yourself and understand the situation, and making decisions slowly by consensus. A circular cycle of gathering information and thinking about the completeness of the problem. All things must be considered in the model. Respect for people: leaders a mentored in the TPS system; TPS challenges employees to develop skills, verbalize ideas and innovations, be loyal to the company, and work in small teams. TPS weakness is that they listen and choose a leader basis on reputation and not merit. A well connected and respect leader has great pull in the organization. A brillant young leader has a difficult time rising to the top without sponsership.

The TPS system is focuses on process and uses a vast number of tools to surface problems. A number of techniques help expose problems, such as, pull systems where the one product at a time is completely built and any error in the process will stop the whole factory. The immediately identification of the problems is brought to the foremost attention of everyone in the plant. TPS process assists external processes, for example after one of the earthquakes, a major parts supplier was offline and Toyota used this supplier exclusive, for parts. Toyota sent 300 engineers to help get the company online.

TPS levels out workload, reduces overtime, and promotes happier employees through empowerment. Tasks are standardized for continueous improvement.

Visual controls are used so problems do not hide, inventory build up, and waste go unnoticed. TPS uses reliable and tested technology. Japan uses four times as many robots as the US. The automated factory has been both a cost saver and a production gainer for Japanese companies. TPS works to establish long term goals. One weakness of TPS long term goal planning is that the consumer never know about it.

In TPS information can use internal and external information given by the consumer; more consumer participation and involvement in the company is encouraged. The phrase "Oh what a feeling, Toyota" should mean the consumer is content with the long term goals and planning provided by Toyota and the consumer plans on support the future by investing in Toyota through purchases.

"Operational efficiency by itself canbe dangerous. Think of the Swiss companies that were so efficient in making mechanical watches yet are now out of business."

"Kaizen teaches individuals skills for working effectively in small groups, solving problems, documenting and improving processes, colling and analyzing data, and self-managing within a peer group. It pushes the decision making down to th workers and requires open discussion and group consensus before implementing a decision." Kaizen takes a strong commitment by senior management, so that individuals can participate effectively without fear. TPS creates "a new way in manufacturing or service delivery - a new way of seeing, understanding, and intrepreting what is happening in a production process, that could propel them beyond the mass production." Lean production focused on speed in the supply chain by "shortening the lead time by eliminating waste in each step of a process leads to best quality and lowest cost, while improving safety and morale."

The first question TPS asks is, "what does the customer want"? The question is directed at both the internal and external customer.

According to TPS there are eight types of waste: Overproduction, Waiting, Unnecessary transport or conveyance, overprocessing or incorrect processing, excess inventory, unnecessary movement, defects, and unused employee creativity. Ohno said, "Every method available for man-hour reduction must, of course, be pursued vigorously; but we must never forget that safety is the foundation of all our activities." There are times improvement will compromise safety. In that case start over and take another look at the operation. "Never be satisified with inaction". Jikodka or in-station quality allows separates the person from the machine. Now the individual is free to be creative and observe improvement. Respect for the individual improves morale and brings more ideas into materialization. Just in Time technology employees pull technology and reduces excess inventory.

Editorial Review:

How to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industry

In factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.

Complete with profiles of organizations that have successfully adopted Toyota's principles, this book shows managers in every industry how to improve business processes by:

• Eliminating wasted time and resources
• Building quality into workplace systems
• Finding low-cost but reliable alternatives to expensive new technology
• Producing in small quantities
• Turning every employee into a qualitycontrol inspector

Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage

Daniel C. Esty, Andrew S. Winston

Amazon Price: $18.15 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Yale University Press Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $12.38

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Systems & Planning
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Natural Resources

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The essential guide for forward-thinking business leaders who see the Green Wave coming and want to profit from it
This book explores what every executive must know to manage the environmental challenges facing society and business. Based on the authors' years of experience and hundreds of interviews with corporate leaders around the world, Green to Gold shows how companies generate lasting value, cutting costs, reducing risk, increasing revenues, and creating strong brands, by building environmental thinking into their business strategies. Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston provide clear how-to advice and concrete examples from companies like BP, Toyota, IKEA, GE, and Nike that are achieving both environmental and business success. The authors show how these cutting-edge companies are establishing an “eco-advantage” in the marketplace as traditional elements of competitive differentiation fade in importance. Esty and Winston not only highlight successful strategies but also make plain what does not work by describing why environmental initiatives sometimes fail despite the best intentions.
Green to Gold is written for executives at every level and for businesses of all kinds and sizes. Esty and Winston guide leaders through a complex new world of resource shortfalls, regulatory restrictions, and growing pressure from customers and other stakeholders to strive for sustainability. With a sharp focus on execution, Esty and Winston offer a thoughtful, pragmatic, and inspiring road map that companies can use to cope with environmental pressures and responsibilities while sparking innovation that will drive long-term growth. Green to Gold is the new template for global CEOs who want to be good stewards of the Earth while simultaneously building the bottom line.

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras

Amazon Price: $18.15 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Collins Amazon Marketplace: 58 new & used starting at $14.27

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Biography & History -> Company Profiles
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Leadership

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 146 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This analysis of what makes great companies great has been hailed everywhere as an instant classic and one of the best business titles since In Search of Excellence. The authors, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, spent six years in research, and they freely admit that their own preconceptions about business success were devastated by their actual findings--along with the preconceptions of virtually everyone else.

Built to Last identifies 18 "visionary" companies and sets out to determine what's special about them. To get on the list, a company had to be world famous, have a stellar brand image, and be at least 50 years old. We're talking about companies that even a layperson knows to be, well, different: the Disneys, the Wal-Marts, the Mercks.

Whatever the key to the success of these companies, the key to the success of this book is that the authors don't waste time comparing them to business failures. Instead, they use a control group of "successful-but-second-rank" companies to highlight what's special about their 18 "visionary" picks. Thus Disney is compared to Columbia Pictures, Ford to GM, Hewlett Packard to Texas Instruments, and so on.

The core myth, according to the authors, is that visionary companies must start with a great product and be pushed into the future by charismatic leaders. There are examples of that pattern, they admit: Johnson & Johnson, for one. But there are also just too many counterexamples--in fact, the majority of the "visionary" companies, including giants like 3M, Sony, and TI, don't fit the model. They were characterized by total lack of an initial business plan or key idea and by remarkably self-effacing leaders. Collins and Porras are much more impressed with something else they shared: an almost cult-like devotion to a "core ideology" or identity, and active indoctrination of employees into "ideologically commitment" to the company.

The comparison with the business "B"-team does tend to raise a significant methodological problem: which companies are to be counted as "visionary" in the first place? There's an air of circularity here, as if you achieve "visionary" status by ... achieving visionary status. So many roads lead to Rome that the book is less practical than it might appear. But that's exactly the point of an eloquent chapter on 3M. This wildly successful company had no master plan, little structure, and no prima donnas. Instead it had an atmosphere in which bright people were both keen to see the company succeed and unafraid to "try a lot of stuff and keep what works." --Richard Farr

Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning

Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne G. Harris

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvard Business School Press Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $10.60

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Leadership
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

You have more information at hand about your business environment than ever before. But are you using it to “out-think” your rivals? If not, you may be missing out on a potent competitive tool.

In Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning , Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris argue that the frontier for using data to make decisions has shifted dramatically. Certain high-performing enterprises are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that in turn generate impressive business results. Their secret weapon? Analytics: sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis and predictive modeling.

Exemplars of analytics are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price, to accelerate product innovation, to optimize supply chains, and to identify the true drivers of financial performance. A wealth of examples—from organizations as diverse as Amazon, Barclay’s, Capital One, Harrah’s, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia, and the Boston Red Sox—illuminate how to leverage the power of analytics.

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Michael E. Porter

Amazon Price: $26.40 List Price: $40.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Free Press Amazon Marketplace: 74 new & used starting at $17.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management Science

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now nearing its 60th printing in English and translated into nineteen languages, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. Electrifying in its simplicity -- like all great breakthroughs -- Porter's analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies -- lowest cost, differentiation, and focus -- which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. In the almost two decades since publication, Porter's framework for predicting competitor behavior has transformed the way in which companies look at their rivals and has given rise to the new discipline of competitor assessment.

More than a million managers in both large and small companies, investment analysts, consultants, students, and scholars throughout the world have internalized Porter's ideas and applied them to assess industries, understand competitors,, and choose competitive positions. The ideas in the book address the underlying fundamentals of competition in a way that is independent of the specifics of the ways companies go about competing.

Competitive Strategy has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. By bringing a disciplined structure to the question of how firms achieve superior profitability, Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century.

The Secrets of Economic Indicators: Hidden Clues to Future Economic Trends and Investment Opportunities, 2nd Edition

Bernard Baumohl

Amazon Price: $12.91 List Price: $18.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wharton School Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 67 new & used starting at $11.48

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Planning & Forecasting
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Macroeconomics

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Every day, stocks, bonds, and currencies bounce wildly in response to new economic indicators. Money managers obsess over those statistics, because they provide crucial clues about the future of the economy and the financial markets.

Now you can use these indicators to make smarter investment decisions, just like the professionals do.You don't need an economics degree, or a CPA... just this easy-to-use book.

Former TIME Magazine senior economics reporter Bernard Baumohl has done the impossible: he's made economic indicators fascinating.

Using real-world examples and stories,Baumohl illuminates every U.S. and foreign indicator that matters.Where to find them.What they look like. What the insiders know about their track records. And exactly how to interpret them.

Whether you're an investor,broker, portfolio manager, researcher, journalist,or student, you'll find this book indispensable.Nobody can predict the future with certainty. But The Secrets of Economic Indicators will get you as close as humanly possible.

What the numbers really mean...

...to stocks, bonds, rates, currencies, and you

Ahead of the curve: spotting turning points

Calling recessions and recoveries in time to profit from them

Leading indicators: where's the economy really heading

Decoding initial unemployment claims, housing starts, the yield curve, and other predictors

Beyond the borders

Why foreign indicators are increasingly important—and how to use them

Making sense of indicators in conflict

What to do when the numbers disagree

Finding the data

Free web resources for the latest economic data

Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution

Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David Robertson

Amazon Price: $25.08 List Price: $38.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvard Business School Press Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $16.34

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Strategy & Competition
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Systems & Planning

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

solid foundation for BPA and Software landscape connection 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

People who have been involved in Business Transformation and ERP implementation often get disconnected from the business itself. The IT implementation often happens in a silo where SOA means software service. This book provides you with the foundation of business process architecture methods and guidelines which help you develop the lower level architectures of data, software etc. It clearly talks about the various business strategies like diversification, unification with real life examples and then drives the data architecture from the BPA. I am actually close to couple of those architecture and quite fascinated to see the accuracy of the book.
Some of the companies I have worked with tend to jump into the software architecture before anything else and every executive with a pen and a paper or a visio envisions themselves to be the greatest software architect on earth. So in most cases we end up with a software solution that does not have a sound business strategy to support it. This book provides the tools and methods to develop that business strategy which can be aligned to the software landscape.
One area I think needed a little more emphasis is EDM or Enterprise Data Management. I believe with web2.0 and web based collaboration - the large monolithic solutions with go away and we will get more flexible modular solution - integration will be at the data level and not at the application level

Editorial Review:

Enterprise architecture defines a firm’s needs for standardized tasks, job roles, systems, infrastructure, and data in core business processes. Thus, it helps a company to articulate how it will compete in a digital economy and it guides managers’ daily decisions to realize their vision of success. This book clearly explains enterprise architecture’s vital role in enabling—or constraining—the execution of business strategy. The book provides clear frameworks, thoughtful case examples, and a proven-effective structured process for designing and implementing effective enterprise architectures.