Developing Business Strategies - Hardcover

Aaker, David A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471118141 ISBN 13: 9780471118145

Publisher: Wiley, 1994

Synopsis

"A delight to read—sound strategic advice that is also very well illustrated with helpful, practical examples. The book helped our management team to thoroughly understand our business environment and chart new growth directions."—Daniel G. Simpson, Director of Strategy and Planning The Clorox Company

"An excellent work. Unlike other books that are either too theoretical or are merely recompilations of existing planning principles, this book finds fruitful ground with fundamental planning principles, credible examples, and superb references, all enhanced by a flowing narrative."—P. Timothy Carroll, Manager, Strategy and Innovation, Xerox Corporation

"Unquestionably the most comprehensive treatment available on the subject. I found the book unique in its capacity to benefit executives, planning staff, and students of strategy alike." —Robert L. Joss, Managing Director and CEO, Westpac Banking Corporation

"An exceptional tool for the challenges facing today's corporate planner. It should be read by every manager involved in planning and strategy." —Robert L. Lindberg, Vice President and Treasurer, Transamerica Corporation

"David Aaker provides a clearly written how-to guide to help managers identify, select, and implement strategies. He does this without pedantry, encouraging flexibility and creativity in approaching decisions." —Sandra L. Kurtzig, Founder and former CEO, The ASK Companies

What is it that lies at the heart of successful management and gives a business its vision, its understanding of itself, and its sense of direction? The answer, according to noted business scholar David A. Aaker, is the development, evaluation, and implementation of business strategies. Merely pursuing short-term goals based on last year's plans is no longer adequate.

Now in its fourth edition, Developing Business Strategies will help you move beyond reactive problem solving and into the development of a strategic vision for your business. Specifically, this book will show you how to:

• Analyze a dynamic external environment to detect changes, trends, threats, opportunities, and uncertainties
• Understand and develop sustainable competitive advantages—the key to long-term success
• Make strategic investment decisions that focus resources on strengths and opportunities—not on areas of little business potential
• Generate creative strategic options that can capture emerging trends and convert a struggling business into a thriving one
• Apply the latest concepts and methods in strategy, and access empirical research for use in developing the most effective strategies
• Develop a formal planning system and implement a strategy—a set of standard, easily adaptable planning forms are included
• Achieve success by matching your strategy to your organization's structure, systems, people, and culture

While retaining all the qualities that made the first three editions so successful, this Fourth Edition of Developing Business Strategies incorporates the latest thinking on such recent topics as economic value analysis, total quality management, the virtual corporation, competitor image and personality, exchanging assets and skills, the borderless organization, and re-engineering. New material has also been added on quality function deployment, brand extension strategies, strategic questions, strategic vision and opportunism, strategic alliances, the distinction between pioneering and preemptive strategies, and the danger of "planning without soul."

If you are a business owner, manager, or planning executive, Developing Business Strategies is the book that will help you see your organization in a new light and show you how to create the dynamic strategies that lead to success.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

This powerful, revised edition of David Aaker's enduring classic helps managers institute long-term business. Presenting a new chapter on strategic positioning, which places a face to the business strategy for customers and for employees, Aaker shows how it can play a powerful role in crystallizing and clarifying strategy, driving strategic initiatives, guiding communication strategy, and supporting the organizational structure.

This book provides a framework for looking outside the business to sense changes, trends, threats, and opportunities, and to analyze these conditions to develop strategic options. A set of agendas helps start the process, which is supported by a summary flow diagram and planning forms. Plus, new and updated sections on topics such as knowledge management, downstream business models, brand extensions, illusionary synergy, global leadership, creative thinking, and more round out the book.

Crucial to the success of any long-term strategy is the development of sustainable competitive advantages built from organizational assets and competencies. Aaker presents methods and concepts for identifying these advantages and making them the centerpiece of successful methods of branding, advertising, distribution, manufacturing, and finance.

This book also helps organizations select investment levels and chart growth directions for existing business areas as well as alternative growth directions, including market penetration, product expansion, market expansion, diversification, and more. Using methods such as strategic uncertainties, portfolio models, and scenario analysis, managers will learn to evaluate numerous investment alternatives.

Aaker explains how an organization's structure, systems, people, and culture contribute to the successful implementation of a strategy. He also describes how to implement a dynamic strategy that responds to changing conditions, how to use alliances to gain strategic advantage, and how to implement strategies when markets are hostile or declining or when competition is global in scope.

Completely revised with new examples from business-to-business to the Internet-related arena, Developing Business Strategies, Sixth Edition is a virtually inexhaustible resource for managers at all levels, as well as small business owners and managers.

From the Back Cover:

"Unquestionably the most comprehensive treatment available on the subject. I found this book unique in its capacity to benefit executives, planning staff, and students of strategy alike."-- Robert L. Joss, Dean of the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

A successful business strategy enables managers to provide organizational vision, monitor and understand a dynamic business environment, generate creative strategic options in response to environmental changes, and base every business effort on sustainable competitive advantages. Developing Business Strategies provides the knowledge and understanding needed to generate and implement such a strategy.

This fully revised and updated edition of David Aaker's highly influential strategic manual offers copious new information on important emerging business topics. Numerous new and revised sections cover such critical areas as the big idea, knowledge management, the customer as an active partner, creative thinking, distinguishing fads from trends, forecasting technologies, alliances, design as strategy, downstream business models, and more. Other important new features of this comprehensive guide include:
* A new chapter on strategic positioning
* Many new illustrative examples from B-to-B, high-tech, and the Internet
* Increased focus on global leadership and global brand management
* Using the Internet to develop and support business strategies

For managers who need to develop and implement effective, responsive business strategies that keep the organization competitive through changing business conditions, Developing Business Strategies, Sixth Edition is the way to go.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0471118141
• ISBN 13: 9780471118145
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 400