FT Guide to Strategy: (Financial Times Series)

""Strategy has never been so simple, accessible, powerful and practically directed to raise profits." - Robin Field, Chief Executive, Fairfax Group " Behind every business success-story lies a successful strategy, and behind many a business failure lurks a bad strategy. Developing a good business strategy can be remarkably simple, yet strategy has become remote from those who need it most; executives and entrepreneurs. Strategy is most powerful at the sharp end of business, where managers and entrepreneurs are fighting to create and deliver profitable products and services. "The Financial Times Guide to Strategy "reclaims the power of good business strategy for those who can put it to work at the sharp end. It will turn insight into usefulness and theories into profitable solutions. "This best-selling guide is a proven winner for anyone charged with crafting and delivering strategy." In a famously engaging and access able manner Richard Koch's best-selling book helps demystify the world of strategy creation: -demonstrating the power of strategy to raise profits -providing DIY strategy kit for managers -distilling all essential strategic thinking since the 1960s -providing a lively A-Z of strategy concepts, terms and techniquesFor managers, consultants and business students, the Financial Times Guide to Strategy offers more insight than a whole library of academic strategy tomes and helps to deliver an incisive and practical strategic framework for the real world of business. This is the smart strategy manual that managers everywhere have been waiting for. ""I penned this book to strip away the mysteries from strategy and explain in plain language how a successful business strategy can be developed. The books was intended to be a liberating experience for executives, and to show that developing strategy can be easy and fun as well as rewarding." " Richard Koch

Table of Contents:
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 great myth of corporate strategy 2. Six legitimate roles for the corporate centre 3. Emergency corporate strategy 4. Olympian corporate strategy 5. Acquisition-driven corporate strategy 6. Market expansion corporate strategy 7. Competency-based corporate strategy 8. Performance control corporate strategy 9. Which corporate strategy is right for your firm? 10. Common elements of good corporate strategy 11. Additional note on the theory of corporate strategy 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

About the Author :
Richard Koch is an investor and author. He rescued Filofax and was founder of The LEK Partnership, the most successful international business strategy "boutique" of the early 1990s, taking a major share stake whose value multiplied many times. He has also financed Belgo, the highly acclaimed theme restaurant concept and MSI, the hotel chain. He is non-executive director of several quoted and unquoted companies, including Advent Venture Capital Trust Plc.