The Profit Zone: How Strategic Business Design Will Lead You to Tomorrow's Profits

Why do some companies create sustained, superior profits year after year? Why are they always far ahead of competitors in discovering the ever-changing profit zones of their industry? Why do others languish as their traditional way of doing business turns into a no-profit zone?

The Profit Zone provides the answers. It is an original and practical explanation of how and why high profit happens, revealing the strategies of twelve of today's great success stories--a group of companies and executives that have created over $700 billion in market value for their shareholders. More importantly, it shows the lessons that can be learned from the business design of these companies--adaptations that enabled them to always be several steps ahead of competitors in meeting customer priorities. Some examples:
The profit lessons any product company can learn from Jack Welch's "sell solution, not just the box" business design at GE.
How Nicholas Hayek's creation of low-end, profitable firewall brand--the Swatch--protects the rich profitability of the high-end products at his company
How Roberto Goizueta's decision that the consumer was not the only important customer created the basis for Coke's triumph's over Pepsi.
Why Charles Schwab's switchboard business design created a new way of doing business for millions of new customers in financial services.
How managers of small and mid-size businesses such as Madden Communications and middle managers in large companies have used Slywotzky and Morrison's ideas to move their companies to the profit zone.

ADRIAN J. SLYWOTZKY is the author of Value Migration and the coauthor of The Profit Zone and Profit Patterns. Mr. Slywotzky is a graduate of Harvard College and has an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is vice president of Mercer Management Consulting and was recently selected by Industry Week as one of the six most influential people in management.

DAVID J. MORRISON is the coauthor of The Profit Zone and Profit Patterns. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he also holds an engineering degree from Princeton and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Mr. Morrison is vice chairman of Mercer Management Consulting and head of MercerDigital, the firm's e-commerce practice.


From the Trade Paperback edition.