I read a lot of business books out of personal interest as well as to keep up to date professionally.
Below are the business strategy books that I’ve reviewed so far although there are more to come.
If you just want to focus on the very best, I have a separate category where I pull out what I consider to be the classics – Best Strategy Books.
One warning. These can be heavy reading for someone not trained in strategy.
I’m also planning to create a category for the most suitable “strategy starter books” for entrepreneurs, business owners and senior managers of small and medium sized enterprises who want to learn more about taking a strategic approach to managing their business.
The Well Timed Strategy : Managing the Business Cycle For Competitive Advantage by Peter Navarro is an important book which many business leaders will wish they’d read before the 2007 credit crunch and the 2008/9 recession. For too long, talk about the wider business environment through PEST analysis and scenario planning was seen as an [...]
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Continue ReadingThe Boston Consulting Group On Strategy : Classic Concepts and New Perspectives has been edited by Carl W. Stern and Michael S. Deimler. The Development Of Strategy What we know about strategy has come from three different sources: Business leaders and entrepreneurs doing what seems right and sensible to win in their markets . Academics [...]
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Continue ReadingDeveloping Business Strategies by David A. Aacker is written to help managers to develop strategies that will help their businesses to compete more effectively and perform better. Developing Business Strategies Review Who Is Developing Business Strategies Written For? Many of the strategy books I review on my blog are: for academics and MBA students strategy [...]
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Continue ReadingProfit Patterns : 30 Ways to Anticipate and Profit from Strategic Forces Reshaping Your Business by Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison, Ted Moser, Kevin Mundt, James Quella is a very interesting book which explains dynamics in strategy. Review of Profit Patterns Profit Patterns begins with the interesting metaphor of business strategy is like Picasso’s paintings.
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Continue ReadingCreating Value : Shaping Tomorrow’s Business Today by Shiv Mathur and Alfred Kenyon could be the best strategy book you’ve never heard of. It’s a fiercely original intellectual work which will challenge many of the traditional ways of thinking about business strategy. Review of Creating Value by Shiv Mathur and Alfred Kenyon Unfortunately both authors [...]
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Continue ReadingI was lucky because Contemporary Strategy Analysis by Robert Grant was the core text book for my MBA strategy module at the Manchester Business School. I was in Waterstones yesterday and it still looks the best of the strategy text books to me. Its big rival was Exploring Corporate Strategy but I think this is [...]
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Continue ReadingStrategy In Practice by Cliff Bowman is a book for managers who contribute to the strategy debates going on within their businesses. This makes it very different from many of the strategy texts which are either written for the MBA market or for strategy experts. Who Is Cliff Bowman? Cliff Bowman is Professor of Strategic [...]
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Continue ReadingThe Profit Zone : How Strategic Business Design Will Lead You to Tomorrow’s Profits by Adrian J. Slywotzky and David J. Morrison is a fascinating look at the power of business models to determine the success of a business. The Profit Zone Review The authors, Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison argue that the traditional sources [...]
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Continue Reading“The Art of Profitability” by Adrian Slywotzky is a fascinating book which reveals twenty three different business models which an entrepreneur can use to build a profitable business. What Is A Business Model? A business model is the way your business creates value for customers and captures its fair share as profit. The best business [...]
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Continue ReadingHypercompetition : Managing the Dynamics Of Strategic Maneuvering by Richard D’Aveni is a book I’ve wanted to read for many years and finally, earlier this year I did. Although it dates back to 1994 I’m very impressed about its ideas on strategy dynamics. Hypercompetition Review The view of business strategy presented in Hypercompetition by Richard [...]
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Continue ReadingThe full title of this book is “Simplified Strategic Planning : A No Nonsense Guide For Busy People Who Want Results Fast” written by Robert W Bradford and L Peter Duncan with Brian Tarcy. It captures the approach of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning. In my opinion it is a very good guide for [...]
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Continue ReadingCompeting For The Future : Breakthrough Strategies For Seizing Control Of Your Industry And Creating The Markets Of Tomorrow by Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad is an important book in the history of strategy. It popularised the important insights and ideas that came out of resource based strategy in the early nineties because it’s one [...]
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Continue ReadingBlue Ocean Strategy : How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne is a must-read book for anyone interested in business strategy, customer value and innovation. The book has been brilliantly conceived and marketed and it starts with the powerful metaphor. Blue Ocean Strategy vs [...]
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Continue ReadingI read the book “Turning A Business Around” by Mark Blayney under its first edition title of “Turning Your Business Around: How To Spot The Warning Signs And Keep Your Business Healthy” This is a very, very good book if you ever find yourself in the stressful situation of owning or managing a business in [...]
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Continue ReadingThe book Business Model Generation: A Handbook For Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur is a remarkable triumph of visual design. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book like it before. I do have some criticisms about how easy it is to read and the fact that the content [...]
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Continue ReadingGood Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference And Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt is a thought-provoking book which challenges many of the practices that are passed off as strategy today. Strategy Sounds Important – It Must Be Good I have a pet hate. If you want to make something sound important, then you call it [...]
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Continue ReadingEvery now and again I read a book that plenty of other people rave about but I don’t get – Creating Competitive Advantage: Give Customers A Reason To Choose You Over Your Competitors by Jaynie L. Smith is such a book. I want you to be inspired to escape the commodity trap, to create and [...]
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Continue ReadingBeyond Price is a book about how to escape harsh price competition by differentiating your business so it was bound to catch my attention. The full title is Beyond Price: Differentiate Your Company In Ways That Really Matter by Mary Kay Plantes and Robert D. Finfrock. The problem with reading a book that deals with [...]
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Continue ReadingThe follow up to the classic book Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter is the equally influential Competitive Advantage: Creating And Sustaining Superior Performance. I first read it in 1990 when I realised strategy was the subject that combined (and reconciled) my interest in finance and marketing. I’d be so impressed with Competitive Strategy and wanted [...]
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Continue Reading“Competitive and Corporate Strategy” by Cliff Bowman and David Faulkner is a terrific book. This lost classic is my all time favourite book about business strategy. It is even better than Michael Porter’s exceptional books “Competitive Strategy” and “Competitive Advantage” which did so much to make strategy such a compelling subject. Sadly Competitive & Corporate [...]
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Continue ReadingThe full title of this excellent book by Bradley T. Gale is “ Managing Customer Value : Creating Quality and Service That Customers Can See” and it is a landmark in the development of the concept of customer value as a way to operationalise differentiation strategies. While Michael Porter argued that the only ways to [...]
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Continue ReadingExploring Corporate Strategy by Gerry Johnson, Kevan Scholes and Richard Whitington is a core text in many of the UK MBA courses and whilst it is now in the 8th edition and I read it some time ago, I was overwhelmed by how dull it was. Exploring Corporate Strategy is a strategy text book and [...]
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Continue Reading“Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors” by Michael E. Porter is a classic business strategy text and must reading for anybody who has a serious interest in business strategy. It was this book combined with Competitive Advantage which established Harvard Business School Professor, Michael Porter’s reputation as the pre-eminent thinker on business strategy [...]
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Continue ReadingI believe you need to differentiate your business to be successful in these super-competitive times when it can be tough to get attention, let alone action from potential customers and clients.
I've worked as a business strategy coach and consultant for SME's in the UK since 1995 using my strategy, finance, marketing and process improvement skills.
I'm a Chartered Accountant, have a Masters In Business Administration (MBA) and I'm a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach.
If you own or manage an Internet based SME in the UK and you want to move from tactical improvements to strategic business improvement, then I'd love to hear from you.
I can be contacted on 0121 554 4057 or email me at paul@plancs.co.uk
A zebra look stunning on its own but a group of zebras is called a dazzle because they all merge into one to protect them from lions.
It's like many businesses. Individually the marketing looks good and a strong case is made for buying the generic product or service but it doesn't differentiate and create buyer preference.
Our task is to make sure your business stands out like the blue zebra and gets the attention it deserves by being different in ways that matter to the customers.
