Execution Premium by Robert S.Kaplan and David P. Norton

In this book you will find about

-Why your firm must link strategy with operations
-How to accomplish that goal in six stages
-Why you need a central oversight unit
-Where quality programs like Six Sigma fit in
-Why executive support is vital in aligning operations and strategy

The reason why this book is so special.

Senior executives love to plan strategies. They believe this puts them in the exalted company of Napoleon, Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz. Indeed, for CEOs and their corporate management team, developing strategy is the heart of leadership. Unfortunately, most companies end up with strategies that are not linked to their actual operations. The result? Strategy that is not strategic, since companies are unable to implement it. Strategy experts Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton created the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Maps and have now developed a versatile, 6-stage program your corporation can use to mesh its strategy with its operations. Their approach already works for numerous top-flight organizations. get Abstract applauds this outstanding book. It is an exceptionally worthwhile read, especially given its invaluable case studies. Readers who are not grounded in sophisticated, strategic systems, such as Six Sigma and Balanced Scorecard, will be in over their heads starting on page one.

Product Description
In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize just a fraction of the financial performance promised in their strategic plans.

It doesn't have to be that way, maintain Robert Kaplan and David Norton in The Execution Premium. Building on their breakthrough works on strategy-focused organizations, the authors describe a multistage system that enables you to gain measurable benefits from your carefully formulated business strategy. This book shows you how to:

-Develop an effective strategy--with tools such as SWOT analysis, vision formulation, and strategic change agendas
-Plan execution of the strategy--through portfolios of strategic initiatives linked to strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards
-Put your strategy into action--by integrating operational tools such as process dashboards, rolling forecasts, and activity-based costing
-Test and update your strategy--using carefully designed management meetings to review operational and strategic data

Drawing on extensive research and detailed case studies from a broad array of industries, The Execution Premium presents a systematic and proven framework for achieving the financial results promised by your strategy.


About the Author
Robert S. Kaplan is the Baker Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School. He has been a codeveloper of both activity-based costing and the Balanced Scorecard.

David P. Norton is a founder and director of the Palladium Group, a consultancy focusing on strategy execution, and is codeveloper of the Balanced Scorecard.

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

One of bestselling business management book.

Published by Harvard Business School Press since 2005

by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

From Publishers Weekly
Kim and Mauborgne's blue ocean metaphor elegantly summarizes their vision of the kind of expanding, competitor-free markets that innovative companies can navigate. Unlike "red oceans," which are well explored and crowded with competitors, "blue oceans" represent "untapped market space" and the "opportunity for highly profitable growth." The only reason more big companies don't set sail for them, they suggest, is that "the dominant focus of strategy work over the past twenty-five years has been on competition-based red ocean strategies"-i.e., finding new ways to cut costs and grow revenue by taking away market share from the competition. With this groundbreaking book, Kim and Mauborgne-both professors at France's INSEAD, the second largest business school in the world-aim to repair that bias. Using dozens of examples-from Southwest Airlines and the Cirque du Soleil to Curves and Starbucks-they present the tools and frameworks they've developed specifically for the task of analyzing blue oceans. They urge companies to "value innovation" that focuses on "utility, price, and cost positions," to "create and capture new demand" and to "focus on the big picture, not the numbers." And while their heavyweight analytical tools may be of real use only to serious strategy planners, their overall vision will inspire entrepreneurs of all stripes, and most of their ideas are presented in a direct, jargon-free manner. Theirs is not the typical business management book's vague call to action; it is a precise, actionable plan for changing the way companies do business with one resounding piece of advice: swim for open waters.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Blue Ocean Strategy will have you wondering why companies need so much persuasion to stay out of shark-infested waters." -- BusinessWeek, April 4th 2005

"Blue Ocean raises pertinent questions… and delivers valuable answers." -- American Way, March 2005

"Companies struggling to stay afloat in the market's...red oceans would do well to look into Blue Ocean Strategy." -- Fort Worth Star Telegram, 14 February 2005

"The book is clearly written, offering many examples of blue-ocean strategies and the techniques to develop such a scheme." -- Globe and Mail, June 8, 2005

Product Description

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.


From the Inside Flap
"After reading Blue Ocean Strategy, you will never again see your competition in quite the same light. Kim and Mauborgne present a compelling case for pursuing strategy with a creative, not combative, approach. Their emphases on value innovation and stakeholder engagement alone make this book a must-read for both executives and students of business."

-Carlos Ghosn, President and CEO, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.

"This is an extremely valuable book to read. It examines the experience of companies in areas as diverse as watches, wine, cement, computers, automobiles, and even the circus to shed new light on the development of future strategies."

-Nicolas G. Hayek, Cofounder and Chairman of the Board, Swatch Group

"I recommend Blue Ocean Strategy to any executive in the private or public sector. It shows how to break from the status quo, create a winning future strategy, and execute this fast at low cost. As much a practical guide as an eye-opener."

-William J. Bratton, Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, former Police Commissioner of the City of New York

"Kim and Mauborgne's strategies are not only original but practical. Our company has used them and obtained powerful results. The authors chart a bold new path to winning the future."

-Patrick Snowball, Chief Executive, Norwich Union Insurance

From the Back Cover


Companies have long 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 in today’s overcrowded industries, competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody “red ocean” of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements fro strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne contend that while most companies compete within such red oceans, this strategy is increasingly unlikely to create profitable growth in the future.


Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more then a hundred years and thirty industries, Kim and Mauborgne argue that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating “blue ocean” of uncontested market space ripe for growth. Such strategies moves—termed “value innovation”-create powerful leaps in value for both the firm and its buyers, rendering rivals obsolete and unleashing new demand.


Blue Ocean Strategyprovides a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant. In this frame-changing book, Kim and Mauborgne present a proven analytical framework and the tools for successfully creating and capturing blue oceans. Examining a wide range of strategic moves across a host of industries, Blue Ocean Strategy highlights the six principles that every company can use to successfully formulate and execute blue ocean strategies. The six principles show how to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right, overcome organizational hurdles, and build execution into strategy.


Upending traditional thinking about strategy, this landmark book charts “a bold new path to winning the future”.

About the Author


W. Chan Kim is the Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD.

Renée Mauborgne is the INSEAD Distinguished Fellow and Professor of Strategy and Management.

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

Amazon.com 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

From Publishers Weekly
In what Collins terms a prequel to the bestseller Built to Last he wrote with Jerry Porras, this worthwhile effort explores the way good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team (at his management research firm) read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. That Collins is able to distill the findings into a cogent, well-argued and instructive guide is a testament to his writing skills. After establishing a definition of a good-to-great transition that involves a 10-year fallow period followed by 15 years of increased profits, Collins's crew combed through every company that has made the Fortune 500 (approximately 1,400) and found 11 that met their criteria, including Walgreens, Kimberly Clark and Circuit City. At the heart of the findings about these companies' stellar successes is what Collins calls the Hedgehog Concept, a product or service that leads a company to outshine all worldwide competitors, that drives a company's economic engine and that a company is passionate about. While the companies that achieved greatness were all in different industries, each engaged in versions of Collins's strategies. While some of the overall findings are counterintuitive (e.g., the most effective leaders are humble and strong-willed rather than outgoing), many of Collins's perspectives on running a business are amazingly simple and commonsense. This is not to suggest, however, that executives at all levels wouldn't benefit from reading this book; after all, only 11 companies managed to figure out how to change their B grade to an A on their own.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.



From Booklist
Collins is coauthor of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (1994), the widely heralded book that was the result of a six-year research project conducted by Collins and Jerry Porras. They identified 18 companies that met their rigorous standard for long-term performance. They looked for companies that had outperformed the stock market by a factor of 15 starting from 1926. Then they went about the task of identifying what these companies had in common. Now Collins turns his attention to companies that have made the transition from "good to great." This time the findings are backed by five years of research and data analysis. Starting with every company that ever appeared in the Fortune 500, Collins identifies 11 companies that had 15-year cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market when, after a transition point, they then demonstrated cumulative returns of at least three times the market over the next 15 years. Collins then looked for similarities among the companies. What he found would both surprise and fascinate anyone involved in management. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
One of the top ten business books of 2001 -- Business Week

Review
One of the top ten business books of 2001 (Business Week )

Product Description

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?



About the Author
Jim Collins is a student and teacher of enduring great companies -- how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies.Having invested over a decade of research into the topic, Jim has co-authored three books, including the classic Built to Last, a fixture on the Business Week bestseller list for more than five years, generating over 70 printings and translations into 16 languages.His work has been featured in Fortune, The Economist, Business Week, USA Today, Industry Week, Inc., Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.
Driven by a relentless curiosity, Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992.In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts multi-year research projects and works with executives from the private, public, and social sectors.

Jim has served as a teacher to senior executives and CEOs at corporations that include: Starbucks Coffee, Merck, Patagonia, American General, W.L. Gore, and hundreds more.He has also worked with the non-corporate sector such as the Leadership Network of Churches, Johns Hopkins Medical School, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Non-Profit Management.

Jim invests a significant portion of his energy in large-scale research projects -- often five or more years in duration -- to develop fundamental insights and then translate those findings into books, articles and lectures.He uses his management laboratory to work directly with executives and to develop practical tools for applying the concepts that flow from his research.

In addition, Jim is an avid rock climber and has made free ascents of the West Face of El Capitan and the East Face of Washington Column in Yosemite Valley.

This is a good clip of how to portray the concept of this book.
credits to http://www.youtube.com/user/VisualSpace

On Competition by Michael E. Porter

The orginal ideas

The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy

What Is Strategy?

Green and Competitive: Ending the Stalemate

The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City

From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy

The new ideas

Philanthropy’s New Agenda: Creating Value
The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy
The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility

Strategy and the Internet

Seven Surprises for New CEOs

Review
A highly respected academic and authority on strategy and competition, Porter draws together his articles on competition, which together provide a rigorous and useful framework for bridging the gap between theory and practice. The book has three sections. The first takes on competitive strategy, evaluating strategies and weaknesses for business, while the second addresses the role of location in competition experienced by government entities. Porter notes that prosperity in both companies and countries depends on the nature of the local environment in which the competition takes place. With an understanding of domestic and international competition, part 3 offers insight into such societal issues as urban poverty, health care, and income inequality. Porter concludes that competition is certain to be evolving, unsettling, and the source of our prosperity. --Booklist's 1998 Review of the original edition

On Competition, a collection of works by Michael E. Porter, is a critical examination of the dog-eat-dog international economy. A Harvard Business School professor, Porter is one of the most respected and innovative economists of his time. Author of 15 books, he advises key elected officials and business leaders in all parts of the world. On Competition features 13 of his best articles over the past 15 years, including 2 new ones. The essence of Porter's message is that every company, country, and person must master competition to thrive in brutal international and domestic economies. Competition is the key to excellence. Worried about losing your job or your services becoming obsolete? Porter believes that a little fear is good for everyone. "Companies that value stability, obedient customers, dependent suppliers and sleepy competitors are inviting inertia and, ultimately, failure," he writes in his 1990 study and essay "The Competitive Advantage of Nations." Porter is a longtime critic of the short-term thinking on Wall Street that often stifles competition and hurts the economy. In "Capital Disadvantage: America's Failing Capital Investment System," he calls for much lower capital-gains rates for people who invest for the long term. He also urges investors and businesses to start thinking together. He contends that pension funds and institutional investors should get a greater say over the companies they own. It's wacky to have company directors with little expertise or financial interest in the company, he writes.

Porter is often unconventional and asserts that businessmen must be, too. In his essay "Green and Competitive," he shows little sympathy for businesses that complain about environmental regulations. Rules to protect the environment don't have to strangle companies--they can actually improve productivity with the right attitude and approach. Rhone-Poulenc, a French chemical and drug company, proved this when it stopped incinerating a certain byproduct and began selling it as an additive for dyes and tanning. Readable and provocative, On Competition is vital for business, government, and financial leaders as well as small-business people and investors. --Amazon.com, by Dan Ring, 1998 Review of the original edition

Twenty years of studying industry performance and competitiveness have convinced Porter, a professor at the Harvard Business School and a noted authority on competition and corporate strategy, that a successful company must not only adopt the best practices available but also differentiate itself from its rivals. In 13 essays, some of which have appeared elsewhere, Porter elegantly lays out a sophisticated analytical framework for assessing the challenges firms face in today's business environment. Although Porter offers no magic formula for success, as a starting point for developing a long-term strategy, he does recommend close scrutiny of "factor conditions," "demand conditions," other competing and supporting industries and existing strategies and structures. Porter shows how companies have bested international competitors by forging integrated global strategies, operating with a long-term outlook, investing aggressively and managing factories carefully. He has also come to see the growing importance of geographical location to specific companies and celebrates the benefits of clustersAsystems of interconnected firms and institutionsAfor increased productivity and innovation. On the societal level, Porter's work, with its emphasis on long-term planning, brings a welcome new perspective to perennially thorny policy issues such as environmental protection, inner-city development and universal access to health care. While this book requires a serious investment of time and effort, its expert dissection of a very complex phenomenon is worth it. Line drawings throughout.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Publishers Weekly's 1998 Review of the original edition

Product Description

For the past two decades, Michael Porter's work has towered over the field of competitive strategy. On Competition, Updated Edition brings together more than a dozen of Porter's landmark articles from the Harvard Business Review. Five are new to this edition, including the 2008 update to his classic "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy," as well as new work on health care, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and CEO leadership.

This collection captures Porter's unique ability to bridge theory and practice. Each of the articles has not only shaped thinking, but also redefined the work of practitioners in its respective field. In an insightful new introduction, Porter relates each article to the whole of his thinking about competition and value creation, and traces how that thinking has deepened over time.

This collection is organized by topic, allowing the reader easy access to the wide range of Porter's work. Parts I and II present the frameworks for which Porter is best known frameworks that address how companies, as well as nations and regions, gain and sustain competitive advantage. Part III shows how strategic thinking can address society's most pressing challenges, from environmental sustainability to improving health-care delivery. Part IV explores how both nonprofits and corporations can create value for society more effeapplying strategy principles to philanthropy. Part V explores the link between Strategy and Leadership

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael E. Porter is the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is the author of many influential books on competition and strategy, including The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, and Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors