Renewable Advantage: Crafting Strategy Through Economic Time

By Jeffrey R. Williams

Book Overview

The task of continuously renewing a company is the greatest challenge confronting any chief executive. To enable managers to project renewal strategies likely to win in the future, Jeffrey Williams has constructed a dynamic road map of outcomes in what he calls "economic time," based on a ten-year study of growth, decline, and renewal patterns of hundreds of companies in forty-five industries. In this superbly readable book, Williams's revolutionary, award-winning concept of slow-, standard-, and fast-cycle economic time provides a unifying business language that the multicycle manager can use to compare the renewal opportunities of widely diverse products, companies, and markets.
Using examples and studies from companies such as Starbucks, McDonald's, UPS, Compaq, Sony, Merck, Disney, Toyota, IKEA, Microsoft, Sony, Intel, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Chrysler, and Hewlett-Packard, Williams explains that the key idea in economic time is being able to manage products and organizations according to the speed and means by which economic value arises, decays, and is renewed. The drivers of economic time are isolating mechanisms -- a firm's unique capabilities that lie at the heart of its competitive advantage -- and that, in Williams's framework, "delay" product obsolescence. Building on his intuitively appealing model, Williams describes how his three laws of renewal -- convergence, alignment, and renewal -- provide guidelines by which managers can gain command over strategy in complex, dynamic competitive situations.
Renewable Advantage is not only essential reading but also will become a standard reference for senior and division managers, business scientists and strategists, and general managers in all industries.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416551239
• ISBN13: 9781416551232
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Renewable Advantage delivers Remarkable Advantage

Jeffrey Williams has delivered a new and important way for businesses to view their strategic position. Whether slow cycle, or fast cycle, his most important revelation is that no business has the right simply to exist. All businesses exist to maximize value to the stakeholder. Sometimes, maximum value is only achieved by transforming your business. Ultimately, maximum value may be achieved by breakup or dissolution of the business. Once these sobering realizations are assimilated, Professor Williams proceeds in a very readable and informative way to help businesses understand where they are, where their markets are, and how to maximize value where they need to be. A must read for voyagers through the New Economy.

Former CMU E-Commerce Student

Jeffrey Williams has broken new ground in the field of strategic management! This book will help guide managers and investors through the often cloudy world of economic time. By following the precepts laid out in this book, companies will be able to achieve sustainable competitive advantage regardless of the industry or competition. Professor Williams book is as engaging as his lectures. A must read!

Must read for any serious business person

Jeffrey Williams takes an new approach to analyzing competitive forces based on the new concept of economic time. This allows insight into how to manage and compete within different industries, or, within different divisions of a company. I found the insights to be unique, and extraordinarily valuable to me as an entrepreneur in the high tech industry.

Rich content, well researched and superbly written - a must!

Dr. Williams lends you his vision and takes you on a journey exploring his concept of economic time. His book will challenge you to think in a new way (dynamically) and permanently change your views on competive strategy.

Fascinating--provides a new paradigm for strategic thinking.

This book offers an approach to devising and executing a strategy for addressing the challenge that all markets present-birth, decline and renewal. Williams introduces the concept of economic time-a view of time in terms of the pace of competitive forces. The author identifies five economic time zones: slow, standard, fast cycle, shifting cycle, and mixed cycle. The key is to understand where in economic time your business operates. High profits are achieved by understanding what an organization must do to maintain its competitive advantage. A core theme is that advantages perish unless they are renewed. This book shows how to achieve renewal and explores how strategy must be continuously geared to an organization's economic time zone, given its product(s) and market(s). The book concludes by highlighting seven steps to renewable leadership. This work reflects and conveys complex and probing thought. It is conceptually robust. This is a fascinating work that provides a new paradigm for strategic thinking. Highly recommended.