Harvard Business Review on Strategic Renewal (Harvard Business Review Paperback Series)

By Various and Harvard Business School Press

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 142212648X
• ISBN13: 9781422126486
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Harvard Business Press
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Renewing what? How? And Why?

This is one of the volumes in the "Ideas with Impact" series, each of whose articles originally appeared in an issue of the Harvard Business Review. In this instance, all of the articles appeared in issues that extend from October 2004 to October 2007; their subject is Strategic Renewal. As the editors correctly point out, "Even the best positioned companies can find their winning strategy suddenly obsolete, outmaneuvered, or simply generating diminishing returns. You must stay ahead - by understanding your industry's trajectory, the role your company will play in an evolving marketplace, and the leadership required to make necessary transformation happen fast. This collection of HB articles reveals how successful companies can adapt to change and position themselves to make certain their strategic outlook remains bright." All of the eight articles were written or co-authored by experts on this specific business subject. Here in Dallas near the downtown area, there is a Farmers Market at which several of the merchants offer a slice of fresh fruit as a sample of their wares. In that spirit, I now offer a sequence of brief excerpts that will, I hope, indicate the "taste" as well as the thrust of the ideas in the articles. From "How Industries Change": "Successful companies in progressive change industries tend to be viewed by the financial community as minimally risky with potential for only moderate returns. Over the long run, though, these companies can actually create very large total returns for investors. Money has reported that two companies that had generated the greatest total return to shareholders during the magazine's 25-year history were nine other than Wal-Mart and Southwest." Anita M. McGahan From "Finding Your Next Core Business": "The real question, then, is how to open management's eyes to the hidden assets in its midst. One way is to identify the richest hunting grounds. Our research suggests that hidden assets tend to fall into three categories: undervalued business platforms, untapped insights into customers, and underexploited capabilities...Hidden business platforms and hidden customer insights are assets that companies already possess; in theory, all that remains is for management to uncover them and put them to work. Capabilities - the ability to perform specific tasks over and over again - are different. Any capability is potentially available to any company. What matters is how individual companies combine multiple capabilities into `activity systems,' as Michael Porter calls them, meaning combinations of business processes that create hard-to-replicate competitive advantage." Chris Zook From "How Managers' Everyday decisions Create - or Destroy - Your Company's Strategy": "Once you realize that resource allocation decisions make your strategy, then you know that you can't rely on a system to manage the resource allocation process. No planning or capital-budgeting procedure can substitute for the best leaders in the c