What to Read and the Top Five Must Reads

Brandenburger, Adam M. and Nalebuff, Barry J. Co-optetion. New York, Currency Doubleday, 1996. Game theory and an alternative model to Porter's 5 Forces. This model adds complementors, business relationships that grow a business.

Christensen, Clayton Scott Anthony and Erick Roth. Seeing What's Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change. Harvard Business School Publishing 2004. Details and examples of the pattern of business evolution after disruptive technology breakthroughs.

Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't. New York: Harper Collins, 2001. The culture, leadership and preparations great companies have made to keep them on top for decades.

Must read

Courtney, Hugh. 20|20 Foresight: Crafting Strategy in an Uncertain World. Boston, Massachusetts, 2001. Well presented approaches for four levels of uncertainty, and analytical methods for each level. Solid read on process and assessment, the McKinsey & Company approach.

Drucker, Peter. Management Challenges for the 21^st Century. Discusses certainties: global competitiveness, new management paradigms, change leaders, and enhancing knowledge-worker productivity.

Gale, Bradley T. Managing Customer Value: Creating Quality & Service That Customers Can See. New York: The Free Press, 1994. Defines price and quality perceptions with a method to track changes in customer behavior. Classic measurement approach for pricing strategies.

Ghemawat, Pankaj. Strategy, The Business Landscape: Core Concepts. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000. The synopsis of the Harvard Business Schools first year course on strategic planning. Excellent discussion of mapping one's strategy. Best overview of positioning corporations for the future.

Hamel, Gary, Leading The Revolution. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000. How to sell a strategy up. Bottom-up approaches. Unfortunately, he used Enron as an example ... whoops.

Hax, Arnoldo C., Nicolas S. Majluf. The Strategy Concept and Practice: A Pragmatic Approach 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1996. The Sloan Management School at Yale course on strategic planning. Solid analysis techniques.

Kaplan, Robert S., David P. Norton. The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive In The New Business Environment. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000. How to develop a balanced scorecard to communicate a strategy to an organization. Great templates.

Must read

Kotler, Philip. Marketing Management. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 2002. The best book of market analysis techniques. Text book for his course. Expensive - buy it used.

Porter, Michael E. Competitive Advantage: Creating, Sustaining Superior Performance. New York: The Free Press, 1985, 1998. Defines the value chain, the five external forces affecting your business, and offers suggests on tactics.

Rappaport, Alfred. Creating Shareholder Value: A Guide for Managers and Investors. New York: The Free Press, 1997. How to use discounted cash flow to estimate a strategy's impact on shareholder value. Includes worksheets and examples. But, in 2009, this philosophy will be under attack for the excesses it spawned.

Ringland, Gill, et al., Keith Todd, Peter Schwartz, Scenario Planning : Managing For The Future. New York: John Wiley & Son, 1998. How to conduct scenario planning, examples and step by step advice.

Slywotsky, Adrian J., David J. Morrison, Ted Moser, Kevin A. Mundt, James A. Quella. Profit Patterns: 30 Ways to Anticipate and Profit from Strategic Forces Reshaping Your Business. New York: Random House, 1999. Applies MIchael Porters theories with practical applications and example. How to find profit opportunities in the value chain and a pattern identification technique. Out of Print so get it quick from Amazon's Market Place or Ebay.
 

Must read

Slywotsky, Adrian J. The Art of Profitability. New York: Warner Books, Inc. 2002. Entertaining and provocative walk through 23 profit models. His advice on what true strategic thinkers need to read. You can read it in one sitting.

Van Der Heijden, Kees. Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conservation. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996. The scenario method and rationale. Royal Dutch Shell example.

Witt, Christopher. Real Leaders Don't Do PowerPoint: How to Sell Yourself and Your Ideas. 2009. Simple, straight forward approach to sell ideas and inspire -- a primer for future strategic leaders.

Must read