The Financial Times Guide to Strategy ^{2nd Ed.}

Behind every business hero lies a successful strategy. Behind every business failure lurks a bad strategy.

Developing a good strategy is remarkable simple. Yet the subject has become obscured and over-complicated by academics and consultants with their own hobby-horses and proprietary methods. Strategy has become remote from those who need it most: owners and executives.

By far the greatest value of strategy is at the sharp end of business, where line managers are fighting to create and deliver products and services that customers will prefer to those of their competitors.

A new business world is emerging, which every strategist must appreciate and know how to exploit. The concepts of strategy do not need to be rewritten, but they must be adapted to the new world. The internet and the personal computer are transforming the way that business is conducted.

This second edition is fully updated and demonstrates how developing a strategy can be easy and fun, at the same time as rewarding. It reflects changes in the theory and practice of strategy and includes rounded commentary on the main theories and theorists of strategy, as well as:

• demonstrating the power of strategy to raise profits
• providing a DIY strategy for managers
• distilling strategic thinking since 1960
• providing a lively A-Z of strategy concepts, terms and techniques

For students, consultants and managers, The Financial Times Guide to Strategy offers more insight than a whole library of academic strategy tomes and helps to deliver a strategic framework for the new business world we find ourselves in.

• Introduction
1. The use and abuse of strategy
2. A brief history of strategy
3. Swings in strategic thinking: Six phases
4. Towards a synthesis
5. Progressive approximation in developing strategy
• Part One: Business Unit Strategy
  A do-it-yourself guide
1. Overview
2. What businesses are you in?
3. Where do you make the money?
4. How good are your competitive positions?
5. What skills and capabilities underpin your success?
6. Is this a good industry to be in?
7. What do the customers think?
8. What about the competitors?
9. How do you raise profits quickly?
10. How do you build long term value?
11. Conclusion
12. Additional note on the theory of business unit strategy
• Part Two: Corporate Strategy
1. The great myth of corporate strategy
2. Six legitimate roles for the corporate centre
3. Emergency corporate strategy
4. Olympian corporate strategy
5. Acquisition-driven corporate strategy
6. Market expansion corporate strategy
7. Competency-based corporate strategy
8. Performance control corporate strategy
9. Which corporate strategy is right for your firm?
10. Common elements of good corporate strategy
11. Additional note on the theory of corporate strategy
• Part Three: Strategic Thinkers
• Part Four: Strategic Concepts, Tools and Techniques
• Part Five: Strategic Shifts in the Twenty-First Century
  The impact of increasing returns, networks, and the net

A very good and practical overview of different strategy models.

Not for the first timer, though.