Category Archives: Management

by Martin Fridson and Fernando Alvarez In “Financial Statement Analysis,” Martin Fridson and Fernando Alvarez provide the analytical framework necessary to evaluate financial statements. “Financial Statement Analysis” provides guidelines on how to interpret balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements. Fridson and Fernando offer information for maximizing the accuracy of forecasts and a structured approach to credit and equity evaluation. Filled with real-life examples and expert advice, “Financial Statement Analysis,” will help non-financial managers gain a firm understanding of the techniques

by Richard D’Aveni In “Hypercompetition,” Richard D’Aveni contends that competitive moves and countermoves escalate so quickly today that the traditional sources of competitive advantage can no longer be sustained. To compete in an environment in which advantages are rapidly created or eroded, D’Aveni argues that a company must fundamentally shift its strategic focus. He constructs an operational model that shows how firms move up “escalation ladders” as advantage is continually created, eroded, destroyed, and recreated through strategic maneuvering in four arenas of

by James Heskett, Earl Sasser, and Leonard Schlesinger Heskett, Sasser, and Schlesinger asked the question of why a few service enterprises seem to be consistently better at what they do than their competitors. The authors argue that focusing on the employee-customer relationships will enable any organization to deliver results and process quality and still be a low-cost provider. It is their premise that “today’s employee satisfaction, loyalty, and commitment strongly influence tomorrow’s customer satisfaction, loyalty, and commitment and ultimately the organization’s profit

by Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan “The Entrepreneurial Mindset” is a blueprint for building entrepreneurial organizations. Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillan have written both a guide to energizing the organization to find tomorrow’s opportunities and a set of entrepreneurial principles, which can be used to transform your market. Using lessons drawn from leading entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies, “The Entrepreneurial Mindset” presents a set of practices for capitalizing on uncertainty and rapid change. This book provides simple but powerful ways to stop

by Clayton Christensen Innovation expert Clayton Christensen says outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership—or worse, disappear altogether. Focusing on “disruptive technology,” Christensen shows why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. In all types of businesses, successful companies with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to let go of traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” presents a set of rules

by Andrew Hargadon Engineer and social scientist Andrew Hargadon contends that our romantic notions about innovation as invention are actually undermining our ability to pursue breakthrough innovations. Hargadon argues that breakthroughs are the result of occupying a unique position in a networked landscape across which ideas, people, and objects from past technologies travel and are creatively recombined in new ways that spark new technological revolutions. Inventors “borrow” existing ideas from an arena, and then bring together the physical artifacts and the people

by Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel No other book synthesizes the entire history and evolution of strategic management in the way that “Strategy Safari” does. In a colorful, jargon-free and straightforward guide, top strategy authors Mintzberg, Ahlstrand & Lampel clearly set out and critique each of the ten major schools of strategic management thinking to facilitate intelligent, informed strategy formation. In the process, “Strategy Safari” makes sense of a field where enormous amounts of confusion exist. “Strategy Safari” is a

by Michael Treacy Michael Treacy uncovers how great companies master growth each year and how all businesses can identify and exploit opportunities for increased revenues, gross margins, and profits. Treacy’s main point is simple—it is possible to grow any business by 10 percent or more, year after year, in good times and bad. He addresses the challenge of double-digit growth with five disciplines of growth: (1) keep the growth you have already earned, (2) take business from your competitors, (2) show up

by Gordon Sullivan and Michael Harper Since the end of the Cold War, the United States Army has been reengineered and downsized more thoroughly than any other business. In the early 1990s, General Sullivan, army chief of staff, and Colonel Harper, his key strategic planner, took the post-Cold War army into the Information Age. Faced with a 40 percent reduction in staff and funding, they focused on new peacetime missions, dismantled a cumbersome bureaucracy, reinvented procedures, and set the guidelines for achieving

by Michael Porter Michael Porter’s “Competitive Strategy” should be a starting point for managers wanting to maximize profitability within a competitive marketplace. The “five forces” model of corporate competition presented in “Competitive Strategy” provides an intuitive and thorough way to analyze the attractiveness of any existing industry. With step-by-step tools to help managers select new industries to enter, forecast how industries evolve, and recognize “market signals” from competitors, Porter breaks down the three generic competitive factors — cost, differentiation and focus —