Books
Rethinking your strategy
What Would Google Do?
Jeff Jarvis
Collins Business, £14.99/$26.99
Working on the premise that Google is the only organisation that understands how to flourish in the digital era, this book seeks to unravel its success and extract the lessons for other organisations.
Written by Jeff Jarvis, internet blogger and media columnist, it explores a world free from conventional rules where nothing physical is sold, content is given away for free and ideas are everything.
After dissecting Google’s business model and culture – in which the quest for innovation far outweighs mistakes along the way – Jarvis explores how it might handle more conventional industries such as manufacturing, retail and finance.
The message is that other organisations must adopt at least aspects of Google’s culture. So a car maker would allow the initial stage of a model to be designed collaboratively online, a venture capitalist would match investors and entrepreneurs, and a retailer would create an online community that provides customer feedback and future consumer demand.
Pros: Captures the essence of Google
Cons: Can overlook traditional constraints
Think Again
Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead and Andrew Campbell
Harvard Business School Press, £17.99/S27.95
With each chapter providing examples of business or governmental failure, Think Again attempts to reshape the way executives make key decisions.
Sydney Finkelstein, author of Why Smart Executives Fail and a professor at the Tuck School of Business in the US, and his fellow authors, both directors of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in the UK, argue that the brain relies on two processes to make judgments: pattern recognition and emotional tagging.
Problems occur when experience does not match the current conditions or when people have significant personal interest in a situation that directs the brain to a desired, but often wrong, course of action. The authors outline four defences against these “red flags”, which enable executives to respond to the situation at hand. These are better use of monitoring, governance, group debate, and experience and data, as well as an understanding of the perils of relying on instinct.
Pros: Excellent use of case studies
Cons: Some models add little benefit
Beating Low Cost Competition
Adrian Ryans
Wiley, £19.99/$34.95
Adrian Ryans, professor of marketing and strategy at IMD, aims in Beating Low Cost Competition to provide executives in traditional companies with a blueprint to meet the challenges from emerging economies and low-cost rivals that operate on a different business model.
The book focuses on four key issues that Ryans believes will give executives a better understanding of the new marketplace and allow them to assess their responses. These include gaining a better understanding of the pressures in individual industries, deciding whether to take on those companies in the “good enough” categories, and strengthening their own position in their traditional, premium sector.
He asks how established companies such as Tesco, Nestlé, Nokia and British Airways tackle the low-cost threat, and highlights possible responses, including launching a new brand in direct competition, differentiating an existing offering or investing in innovation.
Pros: Well researched and thought-provoking
Cons: Too strong a focus on certain industries
Strategic Alliances & Marketing Partnerships
Richard Gibbs and Andrew Humphries
Kogan Page, £30/$49.95
In the current economic climate organisations need to work more closely with their suppliers than ever, argue marketing expert Richard Gibbs and Andrew Humphries, CEO of commercial relationship performance company SCCI.
With examples from the likes of Toyota, Hewlett-Packard and Xerox and easy-to-follow models, assessment exercises and summary points, it demonstrates how to go beyond the theory of supplier management to effectively manage such relationships on an ongoing basis. The chapter on the “soft factors” – the people skills that enable executives to evaluate performance and identify partnership opportunities that also add value – will be of particular relevance today.
The final section is devoted to the “Gibbs + Humphries Partnerships Types”, a list of eight common partnerships to help readers evaluate their own relationships with key suppliers and how these could be improved.
Pros: Good mix of theory and practice
Cons: Basic reading for many CPOs
