Book Description
Brings together the disciplines of economics, political science, law, and ethics to address a class of management issues of growing importance to the performance of companies. Provides conceptual frameworks for understanding issues in the environment of business and their development; strategy formulation; analysis of the news media; political analysis; the economics and politics of government intervention in markets (regulation, antitrust, and torts); the economics and politics of international trade; the political economy of countries; and ethical analysis and decision-making. For all business professionals, including managers looking to enhance their knowledge of an ever-changing, increasingly global field.
Customer Reviews:
Business and Its Environment (5th Edition).......2006-07-19
This book is an easy read. It has tons of useful information. I would recommend this book.
New Edition is Better.......2005-12-05
There is a new edition (the fifth) for this book, and it is better than the edition shown here. While avoiding a polemical view, Baron illustrates business ethical priciples with very poignant examples and stories. The case studies are very up to date and fun to read. More than that, though, the case studies can form a basis for classroom debate and discussion which not only brings the material to life but also promotes critical thinking and articulation among students.
I liked it very much, and recommend it highly.
The book for dilettante readers.......2002-01-21
The author provided some good examples demonstrating a picture of business and its environment. People who have exposed to Industrial Organization (or at least some levels of application of game theory) will get bored of all arguments without mentioning anything about its quantitative aspect.
The book for dilettante readers.......2002-01-21
The author provided some good examples to demonstrate some business's environments. The book is very readable. You will get bored if you have exposed to industrial organization or some applications of game theory.
Pretty Easy Reading.......1999-05-30
I've read a good chunk of this book during a B-school elective on non-market strategies, and found it imparted some valuable information. It's not very prescriptive if that's what you're looking for. But it made me feel like I got something out of the class despite an unstellar professor.
Customer Reviews:
Why some companies seem to have a devoted customer base..........2007-06-20
There's a difference when you fly Southwest vs. United. You feel different shopping at Costco than you feel shopping at Wal-mart. Why? That question is explored and answered in the book Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose by Raj Sisodia, Jag Sheth, and David B. Wolfe. This is one of those books that will cause you to think about why you feel as you do towards certain companies, and how those feelings translate into real profits.
Contents: A Whole New World; It's Not Share of Wallet Anymore - It's Share of Heart; New Age, New Rules, New Capitalism; The Chaotic Interregnum; Employees - The Decline and Fall of Human Resources; Customers - The Power of Love; Investors - Reaping What FoEs Sow; Partners - Elegant Harmonies; Society - The Ultimate Stakeholder; Culture - The Secret Ingredient; Lessons Learned; Crossing Over to the Other Side; Acknowledgements
On Wall Street, companies are usually judged on their profit. Squeeze as much out of your business as you can, cut costs wherever possible, and make sure you meet your numbers. To be sure, plenty of companies are successful under those rules (such as Wal-mart). But when you look at their performance over the last few years on the stock market, returns have been stagnant or have trailed the field. The alternative way to run a business is as a "firm of endearment" (FoE). These companies have a passion for what they do/sell, they have a strongly defined purpose for what they want to accomplish, and they look to contribute to society in more ways than just the quarterly dividend to shareholders. These FoEs, like Costco, Whole Foods, Harley-Davidson, and others, include stakeholders to mean all parts of society that they touch... shareholders, employees, the community, etc. The focus isn't on pure profit, but instead on contributing to the well-being of all the stakeholders. That's why a company like Costco can afford to pay their employees a living wage, have low turnover, and *still* turn a substantial profit. They have captured the hearts of their customer base, and that base will go out of their way to shop at Costco whenever possible. That's also why a company like Ikea can propose a new location and have nearly universal acceptance in the community, while a new Wal-mart location brings out protesters in force. There's obviously a lot more that differentiates FoEs from their counterparts in the marketplace, but once you recognize an FoE, you'll understand why they are successful by *not* following the same formula as everyone else.
It's tempting to think that all the FoEs covered in this book can do no wrong. That's not the case. JetBlue was/is an FoE that badly damaged their reputation during the winter when storms caused massive cancellations. It even led to the resignation of the CEO. Like other business books of this genre (In Search Of Excellence, From Good To Great), only time will tell how these companies will fare over the long term. It may well be that a decade from now, the stars of this book will have all fallen to the wayside. But I would venture to guess that the companies covered here will have a much larger margin of forgiveness than would other companies that are just focused on the next quarter...
This is a book that is highly recommended for anyone running a business. It should cause you to rethink the factors of success for your company, as well as point you in directions that could lead you to become an FoE in your niche.
Why "endearing companies tend to be enduring companies".......2007-05-16
In the Prologue, when discussing The Age of Transcendence through which the contemporary business world is now proceeding, the co-authors (Rajendra S. Sisodia, David B. Wolfe, and Jagdish N. Sheth) suggest that it is "a cultural movement in which physical (materialistic) influences that dominated culture in the twentieth-century are ebbing while metaphysical (experiential) influences become stronger. This is helping to drive a shift in the foundations of culture from an objective base to a subjective base: People are increasingly relying on their own counsel to decide what the truth is...That shift acknowledges a long-suppressed idea in a world largely guided by Newtonian certainty that chemistry Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine says is scattering to the winds: Ultimately, everything is personal."
Thus do the authors establish a frame-of-reference for the thesis of their book: That each stakeholder in an organization tends to thrive best when all stakeholders thrive. That is, no stakeholder group is more important than any other. "It is disciplined dedication to the well-being of all stakeholders that separates firms of endearment from their competition." Stakeholder relationship management (SRM), the authors suggest, can achieve and then sustain superior business performance that, in turn, will create n a decisive competitive advantage. They are convinced that SRM business models will increasingly be seen "as the most efficacious way to achieve sustained superior business performance in years to come" but only if (huge "if") the interests of all stakeholder groups are brought into strategic alignment.
Two Questions: Are all stakeholder groups of equal importance and do they have the same interests? Also, are all members of a stakeholder group (e.g. shareholders) of equal importance and do they have the same interests? These questions occurred to me as I read the first chapter, especially the brief discussion of the "distinctive" core values, policies, and attributes that firms of endearment (FoEs) share in common. Eventually, Sisodia, Wolfe, and Sheth provide answers to these questions, answers best revealed within the narrative.
If indeed "endearing companies tend to be enduring companies," how do the 28 FoEs that "made the final cut" for this book compare with the 11 companies praised by Jim Collins in Good to Great? "Over a 10-year horizon, FoEs outperformed the Good to Great companies by 1,026 percent to 331 percent (a 3.1-to-1 ratio). Over five years, FoEs outperformed the Good to Great companies by 128 percent to 77 percent (a 1.7-to-1 ratio). Over three years, FoEs performed on par the Good to Great companies: 73 percent to 75 percent." (FYI, there are no duplicates on the two lists.) As with the exemplary companies discussed by Thomas J. Peters in Robert H. Waterman, Jr. in In Search of Excellence, not all companies on any such list continue to meet the criteria that were the basis of their initial selection.
For me, some of the most interesting material is presented in Chapter 11, "Crossing Over to the Other Side." At one point, the authors cite Oliver Wendell Holmes's observation "I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." They then quote one of my favorite passages in James O'Toole's The Executive's Compass:
"To move beyond the confusion of complexity, executives must abandon their constant search for the immediately practice and, paradoxically, seek to understand the underlying ideas and values that have shaped the world they work in. Managers who clamor for how-to instruction are, by definition, stuck on the near side of complexity."
According to Sisodia, Wolfe, and Sheth, the big challenge of the times is to transcend the zero-sum mindset because, given the profusion of new opportunities, absolutes (by nature limiting) are found everywhere on the near side of complexity. "They emerge from people's perennial quest for pat solutions, or `silver bullets,' as they are sometimes described. This is a key point because, as Sisodia, Wolfe, and Sheth explain, a zero sum mindset leads to the conclusion that one stakeholder group can only benefit at the expense of the other stakeholder groups...However, opportunities increase by an order of magnitude when the mind breaks free of zero-sum thinking."
There are specific reasons why endearing companies tend to be enduring companies and one of the most important is their having "the ability to transcend ruthless competition and embrace the fruits of cooperation [which is] the essence of evolved humanness."
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Bill George's Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value and his later book, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, co-authored with Peter Sims. Also Michael Ray's The Highest Goal, Adrian J. Slywotzky's The Upside: The 7 Strategies for Turning Big Threats into Growth Breakthroughs, Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson as well as Ram Charan's Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't, Lynda Gratton's Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy - And Others Don't, Robert J. Herbold's Seduced by Success: How the Best Companies Survive the 9 Traps of Winning, Jack Alexander's Performance Dashboards and Analysis for Value Creation, and Michael Useem's The Go Point: When It's Time to Decide--Knowing What to Do and When to Do It.
Excellent description of a service oriented business model.......2007-05-16
This book identifies a batch of companies that have oriented their business model to providing a superior feeling in the minds of their customers. In many cases I absolutely agree with them.
Wegman's supermarkets for instance presents an excellent shopping experience. I particularly love their cheese department where knowledge people stand ready to discuss their magnificant array of choices and even to giving you samples to taste seemingly without end or sales pressure. In turn I buy far more cheeses than I would otherwise. We both win.
But then they turn to Wal-Mart and repeat a litany of alleged problems with employees, suppliers, and communities. My own experience with Wal-Mart is limited to one store in the small town where I live. But my experience doesn't match the alleged problems. I go there, the people, from the greeter at the door to the most junor sales clerk are friendly and willing to walk halfway across the store to help me find something. I talk to people who work there (away from the store) and they universally say that it is the best job they've ever had. Does the Wal-Mart experience depend on the store? Are the alledged problems just that, allegations? And for that matter, does every Wegman's have such an excellent cheese department? And what about Microsoft? Everyone (nearly) uses their products and most people hate the company. What does this say about their future? I guess we'll just have to watch and see.
This is a book that describes one way of doing business that has worked for a lot of companies. It provides a good insight into what these companies do.
Impressive Examples of Serving the Full Gamut of Stakeholders.......2007-05-08
What is a Firm of Endearment? The authors argue that their example companies share a common set of core values, policies, and operating attributes which include:
1. aligning the interests of all stakeholder groups (customers, employees, partners, investors, and society) rather than seeking profit optimization
2. below-average executive compensation
3. open-door policies
4. employee compensation and benefits are above average for their industry
5. above-average employee training
6. empower employees to satisfy customers
7. hire employees who are passionate about the company's purpose
8. humanize customer and employee experiences
9. enjoy below-average marketing costs
10. honor the spirit as well as the letter of laws
11. focus on corporate culture as a competitive advantage
12. are often innovative in their industries
Companies identified include extensive examples drawn from Commerce Bank, Container Store, Costco, Harley-Davidson, Honda, IDEO, IKEA, jetBlue, Johnson & Johnson, Jordan's Furniture, New Balance, Patagonia, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Timberland, Toyota, Trader Joe's, UPS, Wegmans, and Whole Foods.
These companies are often contrasted with Wal-Mart and the Good to Great Companies identified by Jim Collins in 2001 in terms of stock price growth.
The authors argue that there is a new level of consciousness emerging that rewards those who do good while doing well. The implication is that all firms should shift to stakeholder optimization and the cultural values identified in the example companies.
While they don't make this argument, it's clear that the authors have identified many of the mindsets that lead a company to seek optimizing results for all stakeholders.
Before you assume total cause and effect, I would like to raise some issues not fully addressed in the book:
1. This is an after-the-fact evaluation. As such, (like Good to Great), we may mostly be seeing what the leaders are proud of . . . rather than what caused their success. For example, Southwest's success is focused on their corporate culture. But the company also has a better business model than almost any other airline (Ryanair's is better) and does a better job of fuel cost hedging than any other U.S. airline. Those factors aren't mentioned.
2. These companies are almost all in consumer products or services. A class of socially conscious consumers has sprung up who look hard for such firms. It's not clear that OEM and industrial buyers have evolved their preferences nearly to the same extent. So many of the lessons may only apply consumer goods and services (except for those validated by Gallup for having a motivated and effective group of people working for you).
3. Almost all of these firms are highly effective business model innovators who have gained enormous advantages over competitors who seldom innovate their business models. As a result, they can afford practices that may or may not pay off in profit without incurring any negative reaction. The next business model innovation will pay for the cost.
I was surprised that this book didn't look at the study I made from 1992-2001 that identified continuing business model innovation as the single best factor for explaining high levels of corporate performance (see The Ultimate Competitive Advantage). The books share some examples in common (including Jordan's Furniture and Timberland), but many of FoE's examples are also superior business model innovators (Amazon, BMW, CarMax, Caterpillar, Container Store, Costco, eBay, Google, Harley-Davidson, IDEO, IKEA, jetBlue, Patagonia, Starbucks, Trader Joe's, UPS, Wegmans, and Whole Food).
4. It often pays better to serve stakeholder interests than to ignore them. Why? Because ignoring stakeholders often burdens both the company and the stakeholder with costs and experiences that neither want. This economic case for stakeholder focus isn't fully developed outside of the customer arena.
5. The book emphasizes sustainability, but much of that argument is built around companies disappearing from the Fortune 500 (something that happens whenever a merger happens . . . which doesn't mean that the organization goes away, just the corporate headquarters in most cases). In the research of my students on environmental sustainability (see Hiroshi Fukushi's work, A Strategic Approach to the Environmentally Sustainable Business, for example), it's apparent that making the environment cleaner than when you touched it is economically advantaged in most situations. The idea of sustainability is based on the outmoded notion of not doing too much damage rather than finding profits in making the world better than you found it.
But it's a good book that creates more questions than it answers. This one will probably stimulate some more careful thinking in the area of where seeking to be more considerate of others is going to create better results as well as better sleep.
Sharp, New Millennium Look at Emotional Intelligence as a Quantifiable Value in Corporate America.......2007-04-16
With the tidal wave of publicity for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and the spotlight it has given to the green movement, it seems like a ripe time to take stock of companies who are incorporating more social responsibility into their charters. Co-authors Raj Sisodia, Jag Sheth, and David B. Wolfe make a compelling case for how such thinking is not only a much-needed injection of humanism into private enterprise in this country but also the impetus for long-term success at a time when people are seeking greater meaning in their lives. Wolfe, the only non-academic of the three, ventures the furthest in delineating what he considers the art of empathy and the power of bringing soulfulness to the workplace. Such seeming intangibles have been repeatedly dismissed by those unwilling to recognize the human equation at the base of such operations.
Wolfe's bottom line is that soft skills translate into hard numbers, and he feels the days of well-known autocratic CEOs like Disney's Michael Eisner and Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina are numbered if not over. The book's coy title actually refers to the model firms - Whole Foods, Harley-Davidson, Trader Joe's, Costco, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Patagonia, IKEA and New Balance among them - who have aligned principles of emotional intelligence with shareholder value in ways that induce more loyalty among the most valued employees. The data gathered by the co-authors suggests that firms which encourage emotional intelligence are more likely to have workers who benefit from feedback and achieve more for themselves and their companies over time. Emotional intelligence manifests itself in several ways, whether it is more modest executive salaries, open-door policies, better employee benefits, better training or a stronger focus on the customer experience. Moreover, the co-authors place high value on environmentally friendly practices and social consciousness as part of a company's vision.
The emphasis on emotional intelligence represents a major paradigm shift and one that has been working in tandem with globalization in recent years. It has given birth to the stakeholder relationship management business model (SRM), which supersedes the well-established customer relationship model with its primary focus on products and profits. Reflecting a much broader vision, the SRM is more dependent on coordinating systems which help keep healthy the company's economic ecosystem, which is the basis of its growth, development and economic health. The ensuing loyalty among employees gives rise to what the co-authors term "share of heart". It's an elusive concept but one mastered by a new breed of CEOs who manage to inspire with their idealism even when short-term profitability looks bleak. Sisodia, Sheth and Wolfe provide intriguing portraits of these leaders and the unique cultures they have managed to develop over time while still delivering on their bottom lines. If anything, this eminently readable book is a testament that Machiavellian tenets need not guide companies at the expense of the people who maintain them.
Book Description
Offshoring and outsourcing have generated substantial savings and often controversial news coverage for many companies. But these technologies aren’t even close to being the real story. Two of business’ leading strategy thinkers argue that the only sustainable advantage will come not from using technology to cut costs—but to get better faster than rivals. The authors identity two key forces—dynamic specialisation and productive friction that will dramatically reshape the competitive landscape and show what firms must do to understand, build and exploit these forces before their competitors do.
Customer Reviews:
Analyses and Prescriptions for Bringing More Actionable Knowledge into Your Organization.......2007-10-18
Around 1990, business reached one of those tipping points that change everything: You could now add knowledge, expertise, and capability better and more cheaply by involving those outside your organization than you could by building up your organization internally.
Authors John Hagel III and John Seely Brown focus on a few elements of this change as it had developed into management practices by 1995, outline the benefits of going in this direction, and describe what to do in broad outlines.
They build the book around five big themes:
1. Process outsourcing and offshoring provide access to specialization that you cannot otherwise match.
2. Flexible connections with suppliers, customers, and distributors allow you to make the most of these relationships.
3. Letting outsiders help establish the plan and agenda allows you to go in more productive directions than if your organization calls all of the shots.
4. Strategy development has to shift towards building capabilities from these dimensions. Prior approaches to strategy development are largely obsolete.
5. Shifting IT architecture and software to permit rapid flexibility in adding connections to other organizations.
The book will remind you of a shorter version of Michael Porter's books on competitive advantage and competitive strategy, except with a changed focus on developing capabilities. The book also shares Porter's affinity for using abstractions and general language that makes it hard to follow the arguments in the book. Also like Porter, you won't find very many examples.
What I found most inexplicable about the book is the authors that ignored the broader topic of continuing business model innovation (the issues presented here are just a subset of those opportunities) and the newer ways that companies are accessing new knowledge and capabilities (such as through the worldwide contests conducted by Goldcorp and Procter & Gamble). Indeed, I was shocked to see none of the most successful business model innovators cited in the book. Instead, there are lots of references to narrow studies that describe obsolete practices for strategy and implementation.
But if you want to learn how to rapidly throw together a global sourcing and distribution network for a large company that can be flexibly changed as the needs arise, this book is an excellent resource.
Good introduction to some important global trends.......2006-12-01
I recently heard John Hagel present on this book. In the book John and his co-author John Seely Brown discuss how recent changes in the world will force, indeed are forcing, companies to change how they think about offshoring and outsourcing, innovation and even their core business processes. They describe how a combination of "Converging forces generate margin squeeze" where those forces are digital technology (driving down interaction costs) and public policy (deregulation, trade and market liberalization and globalization). These trends are certainly real and visibly changing our world as we watch. Not only can "Customers can access more information about more vendors, negotiate more effectively with still more vendors, and switch from one vendor to another whenever they find greater value" but companies have more options for how to piece together the resources they need to do business. These new conditions and options, though, require companies to change the way they plan, operate and turn a profit and it is these changes that the book mostly discusses. The authors argue that these trends and opportunities are actually changing what it means to be a company. Redefining the role of the firm from economizing on market transactions, the original raison d'etre of most companies, to one of accelerating knowledge and capability growth.
The book does a good job of showing how some companies are competing in ways that would be unimaginable just a few years ago and the authors lay out a compelling case that companies who do not respond to these new threats and opportunities are taking an enormous risk. Whether or not you believe the change will be as widespread as the book implies, the changes are real and will impact your business to at least some degree and this makes the book worth reading.
board implications for sustainable advantage........2006-02-19
John Hagel is a Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company. For two decades, John Seely Brown was Executive Director of the legendary Palo Alto Research Center. The authors argue that the only sustainable edge is to generate shareholder value through constant innovation. Current approaches to strategic thinking are inadequate to the task.
The book has one irritating quality and one large value for Board members.
This is a small booked packed with lots of ideas. I was distracted by the use of "new words" to describe old concepts. It is almost as though the authors are trying to invent a new vocabulary using concepts that could be best explained in plain English. Examples of this business psychobabble include "radical incrementalism," "performance fabrics," "process networks," and "productive friction." These are really not new concepts but they have invented new words. I want to read a business book that would help me improve my company's effectiveness. I didn't sign up to learn a new language.
The good news is that Boards and CEOs ought to carefully consider their matrixed approach to talking about strategy. They call this matrixed approach "dynamic specialization."
The current fad is to talk about business models organized along industry lines. The authors argue that industry focus is insufficient for a proper conversation about strategy. Within that industry-focused model, there needs to be a second strategic focus.
They see this new strategic focus along three dimensions:
Infrastructure Management. Financial services, pharmaceuticals, and the computer industry are already structured in significant ways along these lines. State Street Corporation is an example of a company that services the financial services industry but its value clearly revolves around infrastructure management. UPS revolves around infrastructure management of logistics. An infrastructure management theme works well for relatively routine, high volume business activities.
Product Innovation. Specialized biotech companies are taking on more of R&D activities so that large pharmaceutical companies can focus on scale intensive manufacturing and distribution. There are specialty design shops that serve the fashion industry. There are specialty semiconductor design shops that serve the electronics industry.
Customer Relationship. These firms concentrate on identifying target customer segments, getting to know that segment very well, and using its resources to mobilize third party products and services to address the needs of their customers. Physicians who practice general medicine, financial planners, real estate agents, and attorneys all provide this framework. Accenture is a company with this type of framework.
From a strategic perspective, most companies today like to say that they do all three types of services within their walls. But each approach requires different economics, different skills, and different cultures. When Boards accept the CEOs notion that all three models are appropriate in the strategic mix, the inevitable implication is sub optimization of one or all of these strategies.
This sub optimization increases company vulnerability to its more focused competitors.
Laurence J. Stybel
Boardoptions.com
lstybel@boardoptions.com
Difficult to read.......2006-01-22
The book is extremely poorly written. Very difficult to read. The ideas are not new. Don't buy it.
Good analysis but limited examples.......2005-11-14
Not being a specialist in business strategy I thought there was a lot of great material with excellent insights and analysis in this book, but I would have liked to see more examples or case studies that supported their views. I was suprised that after a slow start the sections on dynamic specialization and productive friction were brilliant and I think even surpass Clayton Christenson's anaylsis of the mechanisms of innovation inside corporate cultures.
In the early parts of the book, particularly the acknowledgements, it appeared that this might be another treatise on how great outsourcing is, but no matter where one stands on the issue it's established that it's a fact of life for corporate america and that the business strategy to leverage specialization outside your core competencies is going to determine future success. To take Paul Graham's analogy a bit further" "Companies are going to learn about outsourcing and specialization the same way a gene pool learns about new environmental conditions."
There's a lot of great insight to take away from The Sustainable Edge, though I wish there were more examples that illustrate their ideas.
Book Description
A brief alternative to other texts, Business and Society provides an overview of corporate citizenship in 12 chapters, with 10 cases that cover small, large, and non-profit businesses. Students—both undergraduates and MBA majors—will gain the skills and background knowledge necessary to make informed opinions about how organizations implement various strategies to fulfill their social and financial goals.
- Opening vignettes profile an organization or situation relevant to each chapter's main focus so that students can preview key concepts. The authors revisit the vignettes throughout to clarify the examples in light of new ideas.
- Experiential Exercises at the end of each chapter promote higher-level learning and require students to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the concepts, practices, and benefits associated with corporate citizenship.
- The Instructor's Resource Manual features several Behavioral Simulation Role-Playing Cases designed to develop teamwork and group decision-making skills.
Customer Reviews:
Helpful examples; no perfect answer.......2006-12-18
First, a caveat. I know the author. I think she is a wonderful person; smart, committed to change, a change maker. With this book she is addressing a key question. One that goes to the heart of capitalism and globalization. If it isn't possible to "scale up" a mission based company without selling out (either the company's ideal, or by a "liquidity event) then we have a real problem, don't we?
Unlike the reviewer below, I think that this book goes well with "Small Giants". The subtitle of Small Giants is "How some companies choose to be great, instead of big." It is in the tradition of "Built to Last" and "Good to Great". And let's be frank... none of the companies in either book are Exxon or GM size companies. Of course, while the press focuses on the big guys, the US economy is driven by small business. That is where the growth, innovation and employment is.
What is going on in both books is that the authors are providing examples that are important: companies that have a purpose beyond just "maximizing shareholder return." This means the companies need to make some choices, choices that are not always obvious, unless you read these books. When companies grow, they get new stakeholders (employees, investors, customers). Does this growth necessarily dilute mission? Both these books provide some examples. They provide hope. But, until we have a "green" Microsoft or Google, I guess that people can continue to argue. And some folks seem to think business is inherently evil, so no matter how well intentioned, any enterprise will end up having a bad effect. I don't really care if those people read this book. But if these books provide an example that inspire entrepreneurs to not only "Just do it" but "Just do it with purpose" that would be great. Paul Hawken probably didn't expect that his book would inpire Ray Anderson to remake Interface. I hope these books inspire many less famous "remakes" and begin to inspire a number of companies that take these ideas and bring them to new industries and regions of the world.
I'd spend the money and read both if you are interested in building a company that has a purpose. That you want to get up every day and work on. And where you feel you will need other's help. One thing is for sure, if you don't have the goal in mind, there are plenty of forces conspiring to dilute your idea. And, as all entrepreneurs know, taking action is hard, and attracts many critics. But building a company can be a positive act of change. Reading this book will help you think through the issues in building a mission based business and scaling it up.
Excellent Case Collection and Synthesis.......2006-12-14
I think the first reviewer missed the point (or several points) about this book. As the title indicates, the book *is* about "getting to scale" and growing beyond being "small" and "local." While she doesn't at all dismiss small and local businesses, these aren't the focus of her book. Maybe her next one will be, but this one isn't.
Any book that is a collection of case studies by definition leaves some examples out (like Whole Foods). Bamburg describes a wide range of companies, and it's impossible to compare them just based on the balance sheet or income statements. She provides the data available to give the reader a sense of the size of the enterprise. Where it's lacking, I'm betting it's because the company may be privately held and unwilling to make this information available. Not unusual at all.
"Small Giants" is a great book, and in my opinion, complimentary to Bamburg. In the same way that no company is "pure" from a sustainability point of view, it's not clear to me that 100% local businesses represent the solution to our problems. There are things that I need (and yes, want) that are not produced in my bioregion, and companies that have figured out a least-harmful way to procure these things for me are ones that I will support. And I'm betting many of these are companies that have "gotten to scale" in the way Ms. Bamburg writes.
This book isn't a manual, but a collection of example companies that have been successful, grown to a certain level of scale, and have not sacrificed the values and intentions they started out with. Are they perfect? No. Do some of them make things that I don't like? Absolutely. But I learned a lot from Bamburg's excellent book, and I think anyone interested in businesses that are attempting to tread lightly on the planet and treat people with respect and dignity should read it.
Bigger isn't always greener.......2006-11-10
The central premise of this book is that the larger the business, the more potential it has to "do good". It therefore seeks to describe a formula to grow a green business to scale without sacrificing environmental and social values. Small businesses and buy local movements are dismissed out of hand as inconsequential.
To illustrate this thesis, the author examines a number of carefully chosen businesses that best support it, showing how these companies have taken Other People's Money without sacrificing values. She leaves out a few obvious elephants in the room, most notably the publicly traded Whole Foods, which would directly contradict her thesis. She also includes a few companies that practice no discernable ethics of sustainability, including a toy manufacturer whose plastic products are made in China and sold to mass merchandisers. She lauds the company only because it has chosen not to make toy guns and claims, quite incorrectly, that no better example exists in the toy industry.
Further, the author withholds key information such as annual revenue for many of her profiled companies, reporting these numbers as N/A. Does this mean the company has no sales or simply didn't want to share them? In the case of a real estate firm, she reports a huge revenue amount, which seems to reflect the total value of the real estate the firm sold--hardly comparable to the total value of widgets that a manufacturing company sells. In both cases, her profiles provide little information and no context to compare these business to other similar businesses.
Laudable organizations like Co-Op America have been promoting this book as a how-to to create a viable sustainable business. In my opinion, our economy and our environment would be better served by well-run and sustainably-minded small businesses dedicated to thinking globally and acting locally. A better guide to creating a responsible and sustainable business is Bo Burlingham's "Small Giants", which argues the converse thesis, offering numerous detailed examples of companies that have made huge differences in their communities by choosing to remain small and perfecting their businesses at the local level.
Although Getting to Scale offers some interesting profiles of a few successful companies, it offers no real recipe for creating one, offers incomplete facts, and backs its argument with hand-picked case studies.
~dan
How businesses can both have positive impacts and become bigger and more effective........2006-11-05
Written by Jill Bamburg (dean of the MBA program at the Bainbridge Graduation Institute), Getting To Scale: Growing Your Business Without Selling Out draws upon interviews with more than thirty growth-oriented entrepreneurs to deliver readers the straight scoop on what to take into account when deciding just how much one's business should expand. Debunking myths such as "you have to sell out to grow", Getting to Scale addresses how to responsibly increase business size while maintaining ownership and control, how to adapt to corporate culture, how to access greater capital and markets, and much more. Written in plain, no-nonsense terms, Getting To Scale is emphatically recommended for anyone scaling up the size of the business - whether simply opening a second storefront, taking the step to incorporate, or going global.
An Excellent Guideline.......2006-10-25
There has been a growing interest in socially responsible businesses. Many of them have been started by entrepreneurs who subsequently realized that in order to grow to their maximum potential that they would have to sell out to one of the mega-corporations. There are several reasons for this the most important of which is better access to capital and markets. The small company simply doesn't have the resources to last through a bad turn in the economy or to expand nation or world wide as rapidly as needed.
The author is dean of the MBA program at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute which offers programs focused on sustainable business. This is an unusual program since most MBA programs are oriented to train people to work as managers in huge companies.
In this book she identifies nine critical issues that must be managed well if a business is to grow yet preserve the independence desired by the founders.
Having formed such a business, I can tell you that her ideas are right on. Only that I would add one more factor - luck. You may be doing everything right when Hurricane Katrina comes to visit. All in all, an excellent book.
Average customer rating:
- Super tools for applying the Killer App!
- Some good stuff from a consultant
- Fascinating
- How many times can we hear the same message
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The Strategy Machine: Building Your Business One Idea at a Time
Larry Downes
Manufacturer: Collins
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Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance
ASIN: 0066211298
Release Date: 2002-06-04 |
Book Description
Underneath the ever-roiling surface of public markets, information technology continues to remake the economy. Fifty years after the first commercial computer was sold, we stand on the brink of introducing intelligence into over a trillion items in commerce at a price too small to calculate. The age of disposable computing will transform every industry. Are you ready?In The Strategy Machine, Larry Downes, the bestsellingcoauthor of Unleashing the Killer App, charts a proven course through the uncertain future of business. With both winning and losing case studies, The Strategy Machine shows how to develop and nurture a "strategy portfolio" that can withstand the pressure of potent internal and external obstacles. Much like your personal financial portfolio, a strategy machine hedges your bets across a wide range of dramatically different challenges your business will face. Downes's approach generates new profits from new information products and services, regardless of the industry or the size of your company.In the book, Downes introduces important new tools every manager can use, including:
The Information Supply Chain -- An emerging, parallel supply chain of data that describes transactions in the physical world, with independent value in the form of new products and services.
Invisible Capital -- Information assets, like brand, expertise, and customer and supplier relationships, lost in today's balance sheet, whose true value is understood by only a few companies.
The Strategy Machine -- A perpetual motion machine for strategy, fused with business operations, the heart of which is an invisible capital engine that uses data as both input and output.Nothing short of revolutionary, The Strategy Machine shows managers how to reinvent business and integrate new technology for a revolution in progress. Regardless of the kind of business or the size of your company, whether you work in operations, sales, or finance, or whether you are the CEO or a manager in training, the tools in this book will teach you how to innovate on a daily basis and how to profit from the transformation going on right now in your industry. This is an essential guidebook for the information revolution -- one that will help companies succeed in the long run, with a winning portfolio, in today's economy.
Customer Reviews:
Super tools for applying the Killer App!.......2004-04-21
Are you prepared to adapt your strategies to the constantly changing future? Are you ready for the rate of change to speed up? The Strategy Machine by Larry Downes (author of Unleashing the Killer App), contains great conceptual tools for thinking about ways to re-invent your business in the face of the technological and globalization revolutions.
It is clear that Downes wrote The Strategy Machine after getting a great deal more exposure to the strategic management process than he had when he wrote the classic Unleashing the Killer App. Where Killer App revolves around the central idea of organizations evolving towards success by destroying their own markets, fully a third of The Strategy Machine focuses on the greatest challenges of strategic change: overcoming cultural inertia and execution. This very likely comes from a close look at companies that, in the late 1990's, at least gave lip service to the revolutionary concepts in Killer App - companies that ultimately fell on hard times as the US economy bogged down on the twin disasters of the dot com bust and 9/11. In a sense, the book attempts to answer a question we will be hearing for years to come: Why did the 1990s juggernaut of self-destructive revolutionary companies slow down?
The core of Downe's strategic thinking revolves around three stages that an industry can go through - each of which amounts to a separate "industrial revolution", despite the fact that elements of each may be occurring simultaneously within a given industry:
1. Efficiency - Value is created through cost reduction with a full-bore attack on transaction costs.
2. Exchange - Value is created through information assets which arise from "virtual markets" which expose hidden transaction costs and other inefficiencies.
3. Emergence - Increased integration of the industry leads to an efficient "information supply chain"
One of the core concepts of the Killer App - the technological innovation that disrupts an industry by restructuring the supply chain - is a clear target for companies that are seeking to ride the emergence wave. Strategically, we see this concept somewhat differently based on your perspective: if you are a young company, you are probably seeking success by driving this kind of disruption, but if your company is more mature, your strategy may revolve around how you can profit from disruption that may extinguish your current business model.
The Strategy Machine does an excellent job of helping you to understand the concept of emergence so that you can be a part of the information supply chain - and therefore, one of the survivors in your industry. It then drives into some interesting prescriptions - always a tricky thing in strategy - which can help you think about executing on these concepts. First, Downes suggests that you design three concurrent plans for your strategy - one for each stage of industry transformation. The aim of these concurrent plans is to have a balanced portfolio of strategic projects going all the time - some delivering the mature process improvements required at the efficiency stage, some the blend of old and new technologies that characterize the exchange stage, and a few, very risky projects on the experimental end of the emergence stage. The Strategy Machine even goes so far as to suggest a ratio (3:2:1) of resource allocation to the projects as well as some good tools for populating your strategy portfolio and thinking about funding of projects at different stages. This is the meat of the practical tools offered by this book, and they are good tools.
The final part of The Strategy Machine covers the challenge of execution. Downes covers the social inertia confronted by all real strategic change, and gives a detailed assessment of the different types of obstacles - both external and internal - that you will have to overcome to successfully implement a profound change in your strategic direction. This part of the book is rich in anecdotes and real-world examples of companies that did or did not succeed in overcoming these obstacles. Unfortunately, while the concepts and examples are good, this last third of the book lacks the practical tools that make the middle third so valuable. Even so, The Strategy Machine is to be commended for devoting so much of its content to the ugly underside of strategy - implementation. This area is absolutely critical to strategic success, yet most strategy books focus all of their attention on information gathering, analysis and strategy formulation, leaving readers holding the bag when it comes to actual execution of strategy.
If your company is either seeking to disrupt an industry with innovative strategy or looking to survive an anticipated disruption, The Strategy Machine will give you excellent food for thought as well as some practical tools for thinking about the composition of your company's strategy portfolio.
Some good stuff from a consultant.......2002-09-12
Have you ever had a consultant come in start off trying to explain what he's doing and you look at him funny. The consultant then goes in and does his thing. A few months later after the consultant's changes have had time to settle, get the edges off, etc. you go 'he had some pretty good ideas' I'm glad we hired him. That's sort of how this book is. In the beginning the author starts off explaining his theory and ideas and you kind of go "ummm yeah okay". Then he starts to put it into practice and you go "okay I see using part of that and some of this would work for my business" and at the end he brings it all together and half the stuff he said in the beginning was semi-useless, but you can see why he said it, and it comes together and you say "I can see how this would improve things". Overall I give the book a StuPage C.
Fascinating.......2002-07-15
A Must Read for the business executive. I found its advice to be enormously helpful in this particularly challenging time.
How many times can we hear the same message.......2002-06-27
This book has a few good nuggets, but the rest is filled with the same consultant-speak techno-hype that has been played before. This myth of a "new economy" should have been destroyed by the dot-bomb, or by the recent accounting scandals, or by the recession. We seem to forget that it is execution that counts. When will we realize that you can't build sustainable competitive advantages through technology. You can build more efficient operations, have better means of collecting, analyzing and using information, and respond in a much more rapid way to stakeholder needs; yet technology is only as good as the fundamental execution of your business. If you want a more enlightening, practical guide on technologies that will make an immediate difference, try "Going Wireless"; if you want to concentrate on strategic "blocking and tackling" pick up "Execution".
Book Description
Environmental concerns can greatly affect business success, regardless of whether a business person or corporation shares those concerns. Today's corporate managers must understand the power of environmental issues, and shift their mindset from one focused on environmental "management" to one focused on strategy.
Competitive Environmental Strategy examines the effects of environmentalism on corporate management, explaining how and why environmental forces are driving change and how business managers can think about environmental issues in a strategic way. The author discusses:
- the evolving drivers of corporate environmental strategy, including regulators, shareholders, buyers and suppliers, insurers, investors, and consumers
- how environmentalism alters basic conceptions of competitive strategy and organizational design
- how external institutions create both opportunity and limitations for environmental strategy
- how environmental threats can be incorporated into risk management, capital acquisition, competitive position, and other management concerns
The book ends with an overall discussion of competitive environmental strategy and draws connections to the emerging issue of sustainable development. Each chapter features insets that ask fundamental questions about the relationship between environmental protection and business strategy, and ends with a list of additional recommended readings. Every individual who wishes to engage in business management in the 21st century will need an appreciation for the implications of environmental issues on corporate activities, and vice-versa.
Competitive Environmental Strategy offers a valuable overview of the subject, and provides a wealth of real-world examples that demonstrate the validity and applicability of the concepts for business people, clearly showing how managers are turning an understanding of environmental issues to competitive advantage.
Book Description
* A no-nonsense guide on how to "green" your office or business.
* Practical strategies that can be implemented at the department and enterprise level
* Applies to businesses, not-for-profits, and government offices
Sustainability promises both reduced environmental impacts or ecological footprint and real cash savings for any organization—be it a business, non-profit/NGO, or government department.
This easy-to-use manual has been written by top business consultants specifically to help managers, business owners, organizational leaders, and aspiring environmental managers and sustainability co-ordinators. It demystifies "sustainability," untangles the plethora of sustainability frameworks, tools and practices, and makes it easy for the average person in any organization to move toward "sustainability."
Organized by sector (manufacturing, services, and government) and function (top management, marketing and PR, purchasing, facilities, human resources, finance and accounting and health and safety), the authors show how organizations can apply sustainability in their everyday work through the application of useful tools and self-assessments.
This is the most comprehensive and user-friendly guide to implementing sustainability in any organization and is indispensable for all organizations seeking to lower their environmental impact and improve the bottom line.
Customer Reviews:
Serious business libraries and management-level readers interested in sustainability will relish it........2007-03-12
THE BUSINESS GUIDE TO SUSTAINABILITY: PRACTICAL STRATEGIES AND TOOLS FOR ORGANIZATIONS addresses a myriad of issues, from tools and frameworks to common practices and how average individuals can help move an organizational structure towards sustainable practices. Chapters range from operating a building efficiently to handling senior management and government agencies. Serious business libraries and management-level readers interested in sustainability will relish it.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Book Description
Written by the first of a new breed of ``quality gurus,'' Fourth Generation Management is a clear, concise synthesis of the best of current management practice and a host of dynamic prescriptions for the future. The centerpiece of the book is the ``Joiner Triangle'', which provides readers with a conceptual framework upon which to build a new corporate culture--one that positions companies for growing productivity and profit in the years ahead. Focusing on quality as defined by the customer. . .a scientific, databased approach to management. . .and the creation of long-term, team-spirited relationships both internally and externally--the Joiner Triangle is already gaining credence as the management philosophy of tomorrow. And that's only the beginning. Readers will learn why process is more important than short-term results, how to foster a working environment in which all employees feel like winners, a new way of looking at data, processes, and variation, and much more. In short, this major release by a widely respected quality improvement leader is the business person's blueprint for the next phase of the ``Quality Revolution.''
Customer Reviews:
I highly recommend this book .......2007-09-09
Brian Joiner really captures the key concepts leaders need to understand to lead their businesses today. His explanation of variation should open many eyes and help many businesses avoid over-correction and over-compensation for what is just occurring. And that is just one of the many useful concepts this book provides.
This book is a classic and should be core to business school curricula.
All businesses have costs but waste is optional........2007-08-22
This is an excellent book, with many breakthrough ideas explained in a very compelling way.
I recommend this book for practitioners working with Lean, Systems thinking or general operational improvement, however, if you are into six-sigma you will not understand the profound knowledge this book contains.
There are a many reasons why I like this book, it has some memorable insights and phrases. Such as `don't work on costs, work on the causes of costs'.
Joiner also highlights how most managers manage their business without any theory behind their actions.. `We should be thankful if the action of management is based on theory...'
Joiner relentlessly pushes the notion that organisations must be `understood and managed as a `system', while developing process thinking, making decisions on customer data and understanding the theory of variation'.
He then goes on to say that the typical management response to calls for improvement is to either 1) distort the system or 2) distort the figures instead of improving the system.
Most people in the world of operational improvement will have come across the Deming PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) cycle, Joiner explains and supports this process very well but he adds a significant insight, what he says is, that when starting to make improvements you must start at CHECK, in fact he devotes a whole chapter to this important variation on Deming's PDCA theme. `Performing check is what most organisations fail to do. Check uncovers things we would just as soon not know, it forces us to look at the huge wastes in each of our activities and exposes it all, and the non productive or plain stupid things we have unknowingly been doing for years. It creates the gut level energy to do a better job of taking Action, of Planning and Doing'.
Joiner states that `a fundamental tenant is that nothing happens in a predictable, sustainable way unless you build mechanisms that cause it to happen in a predictable sustained way'
He talks about listening to management conversations for insights into the organisations real intent and focus he says ... `The way top management spends its time and the questions they ask of each other and the rest of the organisation is critical in determining the focus of the organisation.'
The book goes on to explain how to reduce process variation, the sections about how managers respond to variation would be amusing if they were not real, i.e. how managers work on the people instead of working on the system and the injustice that results in addition to the loss in organisational performance.
A good example of system variation resulting in perverse decisions and behaviour is illustrated by an example Joiner uses in telling a real story about a bank teller, who on several occasions got rewarded for her performance and at other times chastised....finally, she was unlucky enough to loose her job. Later, when talking to a friend she said that she never understood why she being praised because she hadn't done anything different and likewise the chastisement. Further conversation revealed that she had been a victim of system variation, the performance factors were attributed to her and not where they should have been that is to the system in which she worked. Essentially she had lost the Variation Lottery. He quotes Dr. Lloyd Nelson `failure to understand variation is the central problem of management'
Joiner also wallops the inappropriate use of standards (accreditation schemes like ISO and BSI) because they are a barrier to improvement and creativity. He argues that standards far from improving the organisation often result in a loss of performance. `They stifle creativity, deflect attention from customers, increase red tape and make work inflexible, while providing only the minimum acceptable outputs'
When it comes to people motivation he states that `to optimise the organisation as a whole, intrinsic motivation works better that rewards and punishment'
Finally he states that in order to get `better results you must have better methods' and he goes on to explain what those methods are.
This is a fine book, with excellent practical ideas as long as you see people as an asset capable of improving their own workplace and not as a cost to be `managed'.
A Good Read!.......2001-03-20
To survive in today's business environment, it's not enough to just keep improving - you have to do it faster than the other guy does. Brian L. Joiner provides valuable direction in how to get better faster. This approach transcends goal-based management by focusing on the needs of the customer. Only then do apparent contradictions between customer service and cost-cutting become manageable again. The author admits that the teachings of management guru W. Edwards Deming heavily influences his advice. We at getAbstract recommend this very helpful work to managers searching for a more enlightened, more effective approach. It will be particularly useful for those who need a strong rationale to do what they already think is right.
Practical and Realistic.......2000-03-01
Joiner, being Deming's former protégé, has not let the latter down by the technical content of this book. It is straightforward and realistic in its teachings and does not glorify the illustrious side of 'Quality' and its affiliated managerial principles. Most managers should find it relatively easy and practical enough to apply.
A manual well written.
I wish every senior manager would read this book........1999-09-16
While I think the title "Fourth Generation Management" overstates its impact, I wish every senior manager in corporate America would read this book. Many of today's larger corporations are filled with managers so busy fighting for their own promotion (or survival) that their decisions and actions fail to move the organization towards its goals. Adding to the problem is a general laziness in the thought processes displayed by many career-minded individuals. Further compounding the problem is the mindless tampering that always seems to backfire, resulting in increased costs and waste. In this very readable book, Brian Joiner provides solid explanations for these phenomena and offers insight into how to address these issues. As a management consultant, I often recommend this book to my clients. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me - adamleft@webspan.net.
Book Description
IMPLEMENTING YOUR STRATEGIC PLAN How to Turn 'Intent' Into Effective Action for Sustainable Change Planning is easy, but implementing a plan is tough --often involving the coordination and direction of numerous people, resources, programs, and actions over a sustained period of time and across many organizational boundaries. Implementing Your Strategic Plan is packed with action-oriented principles, tools, and techniques designed to help CEOs, managers, consultants, or anyone who needs to make a strategic plan a reality-not just a pipe dream. It shows how to: ** turn strategic priority issues into assigned, measurable actions ** foster creative leadership ** overcome resistance to change ** provide an environment in which people can excel ** fix broken core processes, and much more C. DAVIS FOGG (Nashville, TN) is president of his own consulting firm and an active seminar leader. He is the author of Team-Based Strategic Planning (Amacom).
Customer Reviews:
The More Times Change..........2003-05-12
...the more they stay the same. Despite the fact that this book was written and published more than five years ago, it's still the best book written on strategy execution and implementation. Alright,... I'll admit it: the book's title and cover design need a little work (author take note!!). However, if you're willing to look past these superficial flaws, you'll discover the definative book on strategy implementation -- even better than Larry Bossidy's fine "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done." In addition to this book and Bossidy's "Execution," I'd also recommend that you consider Kotter's "Leading Change" and Smallwood, Ulrich, and Zenger's "Results-Based Leadership" (both five-star books!!). Bottom line? "Implementing Your Strategic Plan" is a must addition to your management library. Overall grade: B+/A.
Making strategic intent into a reality........1999-02-23
This book could have been titled "making change happen." The core of this book consists of a chapter by chapter discussion of the 18 keys to implementing the strategic plan. The 18 keys are grouped into five categories: setting accountability; enabling and aligning action; fixing the organization; providing an environment in which people can excel; and judging and rewarding. This is a superb, penetrating and detailed book which begins with a fascinating summary of findings from the author's survey of CEOs and key executives who were successful in implementing change. One insight stands out from these findings-teams don't develop paradigm shift strategies; CEOs do. Indeed Fogg states that the single most important factor in the change equation is leadership. With that truth set forth up front, we were confident that this book would be a rewarding experience; it was...and we highly recommend it!
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