Synopses & Reviews
Conventional wisdom on strategy is no longer a reliable guide. In
Essential Advantage, Booz and Company's Cesare Mainardi and Paul Leinwand maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with coherence: a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique.
Achieving this clarity takes a sharpness of focus that only exceptional companies have mastered. This book helps you identify your firm's blend of strategic direction and distinctive capabilities that give it the "right to win" in its chosen markets. Based on extensive research and filled with company examplesincluding Amazon.com, Johnson and Johnson, Tata Sons, and Procter and GambleEssential Advantage helps you construct a coherent company in which the pieces reinforce each other instead of working at cross-purposes.
The authors reveal:
· Why you should focus on a system of a few aligned capabilities
· How to identify the "way to play" in your market
· How to design a strategy for well-modulated growth
· How to align a portfolio of businesses behind your capability system
· How your strategy clarifies growth, costs, and people decisions
Few companies achieve a capability-driven "right to win" in their market. This book helps you position your firm to be among them.
Review
Named by strategy+business magazine as one of the Best Business Books of 2011.Few companies achieve a capabilities-driven right to win” in their markets. This book will help your firm be among them.” - Consulting Magazine
About the Author
Paul Leinwand is a Partner in Booz and Company's global consumer, media, and retail practice. He serves as chair of the firm's Marketing Advisory Council.
Cesare Mainardi is Managing Director of Booz and Company's North American business and is a member of the firm's Executive Committee. In 2005, Consulting magazine named him in its Top 25 Consultants list.
Table of Contents
Chapter Page
1 The Value of Coherence: Essential advantage and what it means for your business
2 The Elements of Strategy: Achieving a balance between your way to play, capability system and product and service portfolio
3 The Journey to Coherence: What to expect from a capabilities-driven strategy
4 Headroom for Growth: Leveraging capabilities to expand in your chosen markets
5 The Capabilities-Driven Deal-Maker: Why essential advantage matters in mergers, acquisitions and divestitures
6 Changing the Conversation About Costs: Expense ,management through a capabilities lens
7 Building Capability Systems: Assembling the right people and organization to support coherence
8 Living Coherence Every Day: Mobilizing the formal and informal organization for essential advantage
9 How to Develop a Capabilities-Driven Strategy: A four-step process for achieving coherence
10 The Capable Leader
Appendix 1 Measuring Coherence: Notes on our research