Competitive Strategy Dynamics

ISBN-13: 9780471899495 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 352 str.

Kim Cary Warren

Opis

This book offers a practical, fact-based approach to explain how enterprises deliver performance over time. Rigorous methods explain how to quantify the growth, decline and interdependence within the organisation's resources and capabilities as well as the continuous interactions with competitors and other external factors. These methods create clear and practical pictures of the strategic architecture driving earnings and other performance outcomes, not just for commercial firms, but for non-profit cases too. Management is then well-equipped to answer three crucial questions in their strategy development: why has the business performed as it has to date? where is performance headed in the future if we carry on as now? and how can we alter this future for the better? The book provides the basis for an entire course on the time-based perspective on competitive strategy, connecting strongly to established static frameworks. Alternatively it offers a vital missing component for existing courses in strategy and general management, as well as a key reference text for professionals in corporate development, consulting and business analysis.

Recenzje

"...many valuable ideas..." (Long Range Planning, Vol 37 2004)

Spis treści

Part 1: Getting Started

The Critical Path: the Meaning of Dynamics

Strategic Resources – the Fuel of Firm Performance

Getting Specific! Quantifying Change

Building the Machine: Reinforcing Feedback Between Resources

Removing the Brakes: Balancing Feedback Holds Back Growth

The Strategic Architecture: Designing the System to Perform

Part 2: Further Concepts

The Hard Face of Soft Factors: the Power of Intangible Resources

Into Battle: the Dynamics of Rivalry

Building the Capabilities to Perform

Keeping the Wheels on the Road –
Steering the Dynamics of Strategy

Further Developments on Existing Strategy Concepts

Appendix Theory Underlying the Strategy Dynamics Method

O autorze

KIM WARREN has an engineering background and both an MBA and PhD from the London Business School where he is now Adjunct Associate Professor of Strategic Management. His early career was spent in the oil and petrochemicals industry. He was later retail strategy director for the retailing group, Whitbread PLC during the group′s growth and domination of several leisure sectors.

Kim is author of several simulation–based learning materials, covering sectors such as brand management, professional services, retailing, banking and airlines, designed to communicate a rigorous, fact–based approach to strategy. The Strategy Dynamics approach underlying these materials is a popular option to all groups of degree students at London Business School, and is also offered via distance learning from MIT.

Recent consulting and research collaborations include projects with major international companies and top strategy consulting firms, with whom leading–edge models of competitive strategy are being applied in industries as diverse as financial services, car manufacture, software development and telecommunications.

Kim is chairman of The Centre for Strategy Dynamics whose purpose is to provide management education and establish standards of good practice in the application of the Strategy Dynamics approach. He also heads Global Strategy Dynamics Ltd, which publishes simulation–based learning materials and other publications to enhance understanding and management of business situations.

Blurb

The complexity and dynamism of modern industries and businesses has exposed shortcomings in the strategy tools currently in widespread use. Senior management is in urgent need of a practical, fact–based, but rigorous approach for understanding how their organizations function, interact with competitors and their market place, and deliver performance over time. The Strategy Dynamics approach offers a means for accomplishing this task, and building a more confident and prosperous path into the future.

Kim Warren provides a very clear and accessible introduction to the Strategy Dynamics approach in Competitive Strategy Dynamics. He offers powerful but usable frameworks to explain and deliver the key concern of senior managers and investors – business performance through time. In addition to tangible factors such as customers and staff, he shows how to deal with the unavoidable influence of ′soft′ factors such as morale, quality, reputation and capabilities. He also explains how the Strategy Dynamics approach is relevant and applicable to all contexts – new venture development, rapid growth, maturity, decline, rivalry, market entry and so on.

Competitive Strategy Dynamics has been written for MBA and Executive Education courses in strategic management, business policy and international management, but the concepts are relevant, too, in other subjects, such as marketing, organizational behavior and new venture development. It is also an important tool for strategy consultants and practising managers, whether in large or small firms, manufacturing or service sectors, public service or not–for–profit organizations.