Download or read book Why Firms Succeed written by John Kay and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-11-09 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When John Kay's Foundations of Corporate Success first appeared in the U.K., it commanded the attention of the corporate world--and drew widespread praise. The Financial Times hailed it as "a powerfully argued book, which casts a fresh light on a range of practical business challenges." And Business Age wrote, "You must read John Kay's new book Foundations of Corporate Success. Kay is currently the best management theorist in Britain, bar none.... He is a rare find." Now John Kay has produced an American edition of this landmark book. In this freshly revised volume, Kay applies his groundbreaking theories to the U.S. experience, illustrating them with examples of success and failure in the American market. For too long, he writes, managers have chased after the latest fad in business planning and strategy, beguiled by military analogies and the demand for overarching vision. Success, he believes, should not be measured by organizational size or market share, but by the added value--the amount that output exceeds the input of raw materials, payroll, and capital. Corporate strategy should be aimed at this basic goal, beginning with the question, "How can we be different?" Kay identifies four key ingredients: innovation, reputation (especially in the form of brands), strategic assets (government mandated monopolies or other measures which restrict market access by competitors), and architecture (the relationships between a company and its employees, suppliers, and customers). Success comes not when managers drive through a towering vision of the company's destiny, but when they act on their organization's specific capabilities and advantages--especially in the key area of architecture. Honda, he notes, captured a third of the American motorcycle market within five years. No vision was required for this success, he writes: Honda simply did what it did best (making a simple, inexpensive product), followed by careful attention to the architecture of its business ties to distributors, customers, etc. He ranges through industries from airlines to retail clothing, pointing out the reasons for successes and failures. Kay also draws on game theory to underscore the importance of stable, long-term relationships. Other writers have hit upon some of these points, the Financial Times noted: "But none has explored them as thoroughly as Kay, who succeeds in marrying an authoritative grasp of economic, legal, and sociological theory with an impressively detailed knowledge of contemporary business practice." This volume transforms Kay's theoretical and practical knowledge into a powerful tool for today's American business manager.
Download or read book Why Firms Succeed written by John Anderson Kay and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This adaptation for American readers of the author's book, "Foundations of Corporate Success", uses the tools of modern economics to analyze the ways that firms can exploit their individual skills and unique capabilities.
Download or read book Why Some Firms Thrive While Others Fail written by Thomas H. Stanton and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did some firms weather the financial crisis and others not? This book investigates inner workings of over a dozen major financial and nonfinancial companies, reveals what went wrong and proposes a remedy. Regulators too must learn from past mistakes and require "constructive dialogue" for companies they supervise.
Download or read book Why Startups Fail written by Tom Eisenmann and published by Currency. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.
Download or read book Good Company written by Laurie Bassi and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laurie Bassi and her coauthors show that despite the dispiriting headlines, we are entering a more hopeful economic age. The authors call it the “Worthiness Era.” And in it, the good guys are poised to win. Good Company explains how this new era results from a convergence of forces, ranging from the explosion of online information sharing to the emergence of the ethical consumer and the arrival of civic-minded Millennials. Across the globe, people are choosing the companies in their lives in the same way they choose the guests they invite into their homes. They are demanding that companies be “good company.” Proof is in the numbers. The authors created the Good Company Index to take a systematic look at Fortune 100 companies’ records as employers, sellers, and stewards of society and the planet. The results were clear: worthiness pays off. Companies in the same industry with higher scores on the index—that is, companies that have behaved better—outperformed their peers in the stock market. And this is not some academic exercise: the authors have used principles of the index at their own investment firm to deliver market-beating results. Using a host of real-world examples, Bassi and company explain each aspect of corporate worthiness and describe how you can assess other companies with which you do business as a consumer, investor, or employee. This detailed guide will help you determine who the good guys are—those companies that are worthy of your time, your loyalty, and your money.
Download or read book Smart Collaboration written by Heidi K. Gardner and published by Harvard Business Review Press. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Bestseller Not all collaboration is smart. Make sure you do it right. Professional service firms face a serious challenge. Their clients increasingly need them to solve complex problems—everything from regulatory compliance to cybersecurity, the kinds of problems that only teams of multidisciplinary experts can tackle. Yet most firms have carved up their highly specialized, professional experts into narrowly defined practice areas, and collaborating across these silos is often messy, risky, and expensive. Unless you know why you’re collaborating and how to do it effectively, it may not be smart at all. That’s especially true for partners who have built their reputations and client rosters independently, not by working with peers. In Smart Collaboration, Heidi K. Gardner shows that firms earn higher margins, inspire greater client loyalty, attract and retain the best talent, and gain a competitive edge when specialists collaborate across functional boundaries. Gardner, a former McKinsey consultant and Harvard Business School professor now lecturing at Harvard Law School, has spent over a decade conducting in-depth studies of numerous global professional service firms. Her research with clients and the empirical results of her studies demonstrate clearly and convincingly that collaboration pays, for both professionals and their firms. But Gardner also offers powerful prescriptions for how leaders can foster collaboration, move to higher-margin work, increase client satisfaction, improve lateral hiring, decrease enterprise risk, engage workers to contribute their utmost, break down silos, and boost their bottom line. With case studies and real-world insights, Smart Collaboration delivers an authoritative case for the value of collaboration to today’s professionals, their firms, and their clients and shows you exactly how to achieve it.
Download or read book How Firms Succeed written by James P. Cramer and published by Greenway Communications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hands-on guide to running any design-related business from a two-person graphics team to middle-management to CEOs of multi-national firms offering advice on specific problems and situations and providing insight into the art of inspirational management and strategic thinking.
Download or read book Connect written by John Browne and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. Drawing on the experience of John Browne, former CEO of BP, and the insight of two McKinsey experts, Connect articulates and explores the recurring rift between big business and society, offering a practical manifesto for reconciliation. This timely and important book features candid interviews with global leaders at the heart of this debate, from Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein to Tony Blair and Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. Connect shows how companies and executives can enhance their performance by engaging radically with the world around them.
Download or read book Fame Fortune written by Charles J. Fombrun and published by FT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Companies with strong reputations are better able to attract customers, investors, and quality employees-and to survive crises that would destroy weaker firms. Fame and Fortune shows how to quantitatively measure your company's reputation, estimate its business value, and systematically enhance it over both the short- and long-term. First, you'll learn how to benchmark your firm's reputation against key rivals in six key areas, ranging from product quality to emotional appeal. Next, you'll discover that the winners of global reputation surveys get to the top by following a set of core principles through which they build visibility, distinctiveness, consistency, authenticity, and transparency. Then, starting from where you are now, you'll learn how to implement genuine corporate initiatives that strengthen two-way dialogue with all your stakeholders, and build the "reputational capital" you will need to succeed-and thrive. Why reputations matter: the proof, in cold, hard cash. Quantifying the "unquantifiable": the value of your corporate image. The reputation audit: discovering where you stand. Six key measures of your corporate reputation. Using the "Reputation Value Cycle" to your advantage. Creating a "virtuous circle" in which reputation enhances business corporate value. Making it real: the elements of trustworthiness. Building and communicating authenticity, consistency, and transparency. Standing apart from the crowd. Improving your visibility and your distinctiveness. How FedEx did it: lessons for your organization. Reputational best practices from a company built on trust. Create quantifiable business value by building your company's reputation. The definitive business reputation guide for every corporate officer, strategist, corporate communicator, and marketing professional How to audit your reputation-and benchmark your competitor An integrated approach that cuts across communications, strategy, marketing, and organization Techniques for strengthening your reputation with investors, customers, partners, regulators, citizens, and employees Includes detailed tools from the Reputation Institute's own StellarRep(r) model, the world's #1 reputation management toolkit Companies with great reputations do better on virtually every business metric. Now, you have unprecedented access to a roadmap for building the kind of reputation you need and deserve. Drawing on unsurpassed experience and the field's best research, two leading experts illuminate reputation management for executives, business communicators, marketers, and strategists alike. You'll first review the powerful business case for actively managing your reputation. Next, you'll realistically assess where you stand in areas ranging from product quality to financial strength, vision to social responsibility... discovering how to make the most of your strengths as you overcome your weaknesses. The authors show that to improve reputation, you have to improve visibility, distinctiveness, authenticity, transparency, and consistency throughout the enterprise-not just in traditional silos like PR, advertising, or IR! Want the powerful business value that arises from a world-class reputation? One book will show you how to get it: Fame and Fortune. "A strong reputation is an enduring source of competitive advantage. In Fame and Fortune, Fombrun and van Riel show how successful companies mobilize the support of employees, consumers, and investors to strengthen their reputational capital. An excellent read!" --Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, President & CEO, FedEx Corp.
Download or read book Companies Don t Succeed People Do written by Bob Nelson and published by . This book was released on 2015-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even the most talented individual soon realizes that the secret to achieving more in business and life is through mastering the art of motivating teams. In Companies Don't Succeed...People Do, you'll find real stories, techniques and examples from leaders who have all tried to increase the motivation, performance and success of their teams. Use this book as a starting point for how to improve your own team and make it more successful.
Download or read book World Class IT written by Peter A. High and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Class IT Technology is all around us. It is so pervasive in our daily lives that we may not even recognize when we interact with it. Despite this fact, many companies have yet to leverage information technology as a strategic weapon. What then is an information technology executive to do in order to raise the prominence of his or her department? In World Class IT, recognized expert in IT strategy Peter High reveals the essential principles IT executives must follow and the order in which they should follow them whether they are at the helm of a high-performing department or one in need of great improvement. Principle 1: Recruit, train, and retain World Class IT people Principle 2: Build and maintain a robust IT infrastructure Principle 3: Manage projects and portfolios effectively Principle 4: Ensure partnerships within the IT department and with the business Principle 5: Develop a collaborative relationship with external partners The principles and associated subprinciples and metrics introduced in World Class IT have been used by IT and business executives alike at many Global 1000 companies to monitor and improve IT's performance. Those principles pertain as much to the leaders of IT as they do to those striving to emulate them.
Download or read book Enduring Success written by Christian Stadler and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-05 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enduring Success addresses a key question in business today: How can companies succeed over time? To learn the source of enduring greatness, author Christian Stadler directed a team of eight researchers in a six-year study of some of Europe's oldest and most stellar companies, targeting nine that have survived for more than 100 years and have significantly outperformed the market over the past fifty years. Readers may wonder, "Why European companies?" Yet, Europe is the ideal place to seek the key to long-term success; half of the Fortune Global 500 companies that are 100 years old or older can be found in Europe, as can 72 of the 100 oldest family businesses in the world. Fifteen years after Collins and Porras' Built to Last, this new book incorporates fresh insights from management science and provides the first non-US perspective on long-range success. Through Stadler's study, a counterintuitive story emerges: the greatest companies adapt to a constantly changing environment by being intelligently conservative. Enduring Success provides a coherent framework, grounded in five principles and practical concepts, for business leaders who are prepared to learn from the history of some of the world's greatest institutions. Please visit the author's YouTube channel www.youtube.com/user/StadlerChristian for more discussion of the book.
Download or read book Success Made Simple written by Erik Wesner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-03-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The keys to better business from a thriving group of business owners-the Amish Business can be discouraging. According to US Department of Labor figures, only 44 percent of newly-opened firms will last four years. Amish firms, on the other hand, have registered a 95% survival rate over a five-year period. And in many cases, those businesses do remarkably well-as Donald Kraybill writes: "the phrase 'Amish millionaire' is no longer an oxymoron." Success Made Simple is the first practical book of Amish business success principles for the non-Amish reader. The work provides a platform of transferable principles--simple and universal enough to be applied in the non-Amish world, in a wide variety of business and management settings. Learn how to develop profitable and fulfilling enterprises as Amish explain how to build fruitful relationships with customers and employees, prosper by playing to strengths, and create an effective marketing story Includes interviews with over 50 Amish business owners outline the role of relationships in business and the importance of the big picture-taking in long-term goals, the welfare of others, and personal integrity Offers ideas on practical application of Amish business practices to non-Amish businesses, with bullet summaries at the end of each chapter reviewing the most important take-away points With a focus on relationship-building and the big picture, Success Made Simple offers business owners everywhere the tools for better, smarter, more successful enterprises.
Download or read book How Firms Succeed written by James P. Cramer and published by Greenway Group. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking guide to successful management in architecture, engineering, and design, the culmination of a decade of work, combines practical solutions with business theory and an eye-opening treatise on the anatomy of leadership.
Download or read book How to Succeed in Business Without Being White written by Earl G. Graves and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the high-profile founder of the highly successful "Black Enterprise" magazine comes an illuminating guide for the aspiring African-American entrepreneur. Graves uses his own story--which includes careers in the military, real estate, and public service as an assistant to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy--and those of dozens of other black men and women as examples of how to achieve professional success.
Download or read book Simplify written by Richard Koch and published by Piatkus. This book was released on 2016-04-07 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past forty years, Richard Koch has worked to uncover simple and elegant principles which govern business success. To qualify, a principle must be so overwhelmingly powerful that anyone can reliably apply it to generate extraordinary results. Working with venture capitalist Greg Lockwood and supported by specially commissioned research from OC&C Strategy Consultants, Koch has now found one elemental principle that unites extraordinarily valuable companies: simplifying. Some firms simplify on price - consider budget flights stripped of all extras that still take you from A to B - creating new, huge mass markets for their wares. Others, such as Apple, simplify their proposition, bringing a beautifully easy-to-use product or service to a large premium market. How can your business become a simplifier? With case studies of some of the most famous firms of the last hundred years, from finance to fast food, this enlightening book shows how to analyse any company's potential to simplify, and enrich the world.
Download or read book Succeed the Right Way written by Paul Gunn and published by Leaders Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
