FT Guide to Strategy:How to create and deliver a winning strategy

Description

Table of Contents

Foreword to the third edition

Acknowledgements

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. Addition note on the theory of Business Unit Strategy

PART TWO: CORPORATE STRATEGY
1. The joy of Corporate Strategy

2. An ecological view of Corporate Strategy

3. Five dimensions of Corporate Strategy

4. Conclusion

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

Notes

Index

Back Cover

"If you want a world-class strategy for next to no cost, this book is for you."
Tim Bunting, Chairman, Betfair, and former Deputy Chairman, Goldman Sachs

This best-selling guide is a proven winner for anyone crafting and realising strategy

Every business needs a strategy. But what exactly is a good strategy? How do you get one? What are the key concepts and models you need to know about? In the third edition of this best-selling, widely acclaimed and highly readable guide, Richard Koch swings you breezily through each step in developing a great strategy, both for individual businesses and for firms as a whole.

In his inimitable direct and engaging tone, Koch:

• shows how crafting strategy is fun
• demonstrates how strategy can raise profits in any business
• supplies a DIY strategy kit
• distils strategic thinking since 1960 into one handy overview
• provides a lively A-Z reference of strategy concepts, techniques and key thinkers

For executives, consultants and students, The Financial Times Guide to Strategy offers more insight than a whole library of academic strategy tomes. This is the smartest strategy available anywhere.

"Strategy has never been so simple, accessible, powerful and practically directed to raise profits."
Robin Field, former Chairman & CEO, Filofax

"Highly readable and amazingly useful.  It distils the work of strategy experts and make it all so easy to use.  Koch has a unique and insightful perspective on almost all aspects of strategy."
Geoff Cullinan, Partner, Bain & Co

"The new 'evolutionary' section on Corporate Strategy is fascinating and great fun to read." 
Marcus Alexander, Strategy Professor, London Business School

"It is difficult to imagine how you could be a good strategist without this book...essential and stimulating reading." 
Chris Outram, Chairman Emeritus, OC&C Strategy Consultants

"Takes the best ideas from academia and makes them practical for the busy business person.  This is stuff you can put to great use NOW."
James A. Lawrence, Vice-Chairman, General Mills, Inc.

Author

Richard Koch is the author of 15 highly acclaimed books, including the best-selling 80/20 trilogy: The 80/20 Principle (over 700,000 copies sold), The 80/20 Individual, and most recently Living the 80/20 Way.

As well as lecturing and broadcasting, he is an extremely successful entrepreneur and investor.  His ventures have included Filofax, Belgo, Plymouth Gin, Capstone, and currently Betfair, the world’s largest betting exchange. Formerly he was a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, a partner of Bain & Company, and a founder of LEK Consulting.  He was educated at the Universityof Pennsylvania and at Oxford University.

He is now an outside director of several companies, including listed venture capital houses in Luxembourg and the UK. He has homes in London, Cape Town, and the south of Spain.

Reader Review(s)

"an engaging, accessible guide to every area of strategy" - Start Your Business Magazine, July 2006

Author article in Strategy Magazine September 2006

"It's extremely pleasing to read something as well written as The FT Guide to Strategy... never failed to keep me interested" - Quality World, November 2006