A collection of the best thinking from one of the most innovative management consulting firms in the world For more than forty years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping strategic thinking in business. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers a broad and up-to-date selection of the firm's best ideas on strategy with fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here's a sampling of the provocative thinking you'll find inside:
"You have to be the scientist of your own life and be astonished four times:at what is, what always has been, what once was, and what could be."
"The majority of products in most companies are cash traps . . . .[They] are not only worthless, but a perpetual drain on corporate resources."
"Use more debt than your competition or get out of the business."
"When information flows freely, reputation, more than reciprocity,becomes the basis for trust."
"As a strategic weapon, time is the equivalent of money, productivity,quality, even innovation."
"When brands become business systems, brand management becomes far too important to leave to the marketing department."
"The winning organization of the future will look more like a collection ofjazz ensembles than a symphony orchestra."
"Most of our organizations today derive from a model whose original purpose was to control creativity."
"Rather than being an obstacle, uncertainty is the very engine of transformation in a business, a continuous source of new opportunities."
"IP assets lack clear property lines. Every bit of intellectual property you can own comes with connections to other valuable innovations."
This remarkable anthology of articles on strategy and management is an essential companion for executives facing the need to rethink their businesses. Whether the task is to defeat new or entrenched competitors, it is often necessary to go back to the basics and to consider radical departures. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy will help readers do both because it contains seminal concepts about reducing costs and gaining market share, as well as new thinking on the power of networks, pricing and segmentation, and the impact of ever cheaper communications and distribution.
With the exception of several articles that appeared first in the Harvard Business Review, most of the pieces in this book are "Perspectives," short essays that were originally published by The Boston Consulting Group for its clients. The ideas they present were almost all developed and tested in the course of working with clients worldwide to improve both position and performance.
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is regarded as one of the premier management consulting firms. The Financial Times once credited its founder, Bruce Henderson, with inventing the field of corporate strategy. The themes that run through BCG's ideas—the importance of competitive advantage, the need to "break compromises" and "de-average" the numbers, the value of time, and the power of seeing second or third order causes—are more relevant than ever because the need for effective strategy has never been greater. This is a book for managers who want to understand how the business world really works and how to change the course of their companies based on that understanding.
