Competitive Strategy Dynamics - Tapa dura

The complexity and dynamism of modern industries and businesses has exposed shortcomings in the strategy tools currently in widespread use. Senior management is in urgent need of a practical, fact-based, but rigorous approach for understanding how their organizations function, interact with competitors and their market place, and deliver performance over time. The Strategy Dynamics approach offers a means for accomplishing this task, and building a more confident and prosperous path into the future.

Kim Warren provides a very clear and accessible introduction to the Strategy Dynamics approach in Competitive Strategy Dynamics. He offers powerful but usable frameworks to explain and deliver the key concern of senior managers and investors - business performance through time. In addition to tangible factors such as customers and staff, he shows how to deal with the unavoidable influence of 'soft' factors such as morale, quality, reputation and capabilities. He also explains how the Strategy Dynamics approach is relevant and applicable to all contexts - new venture development, rapid growth, maturity, decline, rivalry, market entry and so on.

Competitive Strategy Dynamics has been written for MBA and Executive Education courses in strategic management, business policy and international management, but the concepts are relevant, too, in other subjects, such as marketing, organizational behavior and new venture development. It is also an important tool for strategy consultants and practising managers, whether in large or small firms, manufacturing or service sectors, public service or not-for-profit organizations.

Professionals and students of strategy are hungry for reliable, fact-based approaches to analyzing business performance and developing strategy. They especially need to understand what drives performance through time, not only to communicate and persuade others of desirable initiatives, but also to provide a sound basis for investors to value firms and their plans. Common approaches to Strategy are often derived from statistical methods, and are inadequate for responding to this need for time-based understanding. In contrast, the notion that business resources accumulate and deplete as time passes is readily understood by management, and is also amenable to rigorous analysis.

Kim Warren explains these underlying principles in terms that managers and students can understand, and through frameworks that educators can teach. The book is built around a wide range of illustrative examples, and supported by short descriptions of real cases. The approach is as applicable to non-profit and governmental cases as to commercial firms.