Focus: The Future of Your Company Depends on It

The coauthor of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing shares practical advice on how companies can increase profitability and competitiveness by focusing on core products and eliminating extraneous areas. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

While he doesn't go so far as to say that small is beautiful, Ries (Positioning) levels a commonsense critique at the compulsion for growth that drives corporate America. Growth for its own sake, particularly when it involves diversification into products unrelated to a company's original business, Ries says, causes many companies to become unfocused, confuses customers and loses money. The frenzy for acquisitions that spread many a well-known brand name over a diversity of products has proved untenable, with the result that companies that grew fat are regaining their original focus by slimming down. Sears, Roebuck, a once focused retailer that expanded unwisely into real estate, stock brokering, business system centers and credit cards, is having to divest itself of all but its original retail chain. Managers seeking to focus or refocus their companies will find helpful examples here, drawn from a broad range of enterprises. $50,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ries, whose previous books were authored with Jack Trout, writes his latest with research assistance from his daughter. Together they go after the management of some of the world's most easily recognized firms, including PepsiCo and IBM. The authors use companies' experience as evidence that "focus" on the core businesses or products is the key to success in today's business environment, arguing that companies that remain focused, e.g., Volvo or McDonald's, have a substantially better track record than those that have strayed from their "core" businesses. This thesis, which is illustrated liberally with examples from the business world, is thoroughly developed. The reader may not always agree with the authors' statements, but they are well made and worth considering. For all management collections and for libraries that support all types of business, large or small.
Littleton M. Maxwell, Business Information Ctr., Univ. of Richmond, Va.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ries and consulting partner Jack Trout have done much to "market" marketing. They have popularized such concepts as positioning and bottom-up marketing in such books as Marketing Warfare (1986) and 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (1993). Now writing solo for the first time, Ries targets practitioners with a message similar to--but more straightforward than and not nearly as ponderous as--that of Michael Porter in Competitive Advantage (1985). Providing illustrative examples from the marketplace, Ries argues that companies must "re-discover" what first made them successful and then concentrate on only those products and activities that lead to that success. Good advice! Even for libraries!! David Rouse