Book Description

Your company must have a business plan if you expect to succeed in today's tough business world. To help make that first step a giant step, this inspired guide will show you how to write a winning business plan, eliminate the frustration of starting a new business, expand your current enterprise--or even get cash out of your existing business!

Joseph A.Covello and Brian J. Hazelgren, authors of the highly successful Your First Business Plan, reveal the secrets of creating a powerful, winning business plan based on their more than two decades of combined experience writing business plans. Follow their proven methods--help your business succeed now!

Discover How To:
--Take total control of your business
--Dramatically improve your profits
--Provide the critical elements required by investors, lenders and buyers
--Develop your unique selling advantage
--Raise capital in any economy
--Operate a profitable enterprise with one powerful management tool
--Stay ahead of your competition--always
--Make your business plan the heart and soul of your operation

You'll Be Able to Create Powerful--
--Market Analyses
--Selling Concepts
--Marketing Strategies
--Financial Presentations
--Management Systems
--Product Advantages ... Read more

Reviews (7)

EXCELLENT - a must have at this price
I am an intellectual property attorney and law professor. I frequently have the opportunity to talk to entrepreneurs and individuals interested in start up advise. I ALWAYS recommend this book to people who are new to business plans. The book has some sample business plans in the back. Truthfully these sample plans are not all that good, but do provide some idea of the proper layout and format of a business plan. The reason I like this book so much is because of the detailed questions it forces readers to ask themselves. The majority of the book is set up like a workbook, and asks highly detailed questions that must be answered before writing can begin. These questions will also force the would be entrepreneur to think of and address a series of questions that many first timers would forget or not even know to ask or consider. This book is probably not for people who have been through the process, but for those who are doing it themselves and/or doing it for the first time buying this book is money well spent!

Not great
This book is far from complete. It has some very basic information about creating a business plan, asks you pertinent questions regarding creating your plan, and has 11 pretty poor examples.

I originally bought the book for a Business Plan Writing Class. It was a new book for the instructor and he abandon using it after the second week. It does not provide details in any area of business planning, and though it asks you questions to get you thinking in the correct way, does not provide guidance on how to answer the questions or what areas are important for different types of plans. Furthermore, the questions are not structured in a way that actually helps you formulate a useable business plan. The “101 questions” remind me to a employment application or high school written exam.

One of the reasons the instructor selected the book was for the examples. Upon closer examination however, they are really bad business plans that do not provide the depth required in the "real world." The plans are very simplistic. They might pass for someone getting an SBA loan or for internal management use, but a VC or other sophisticated financier would immediately throw any of these plans away. Even the formatting of the plans are bad; they look like they were written on a typewriter twenty years ago!

The book offers little to no advice on how to write your plan for different target audiences, what elements are important for different types of businesses, and because its examples are so incomplete, they give someone without prior exposure to business plans a false idea of what your financier is really looking for. ...

Interesting Book
It has been a life saviour and taught me to write a Business Plan in a very easy and lucid manner.

The best "how to" manual on business planning
I have read dozens of books on business planning and this is by far the best. I have encouraged all of my clients to read this book and they have all benefited from the information. Hazelgren writes clearly and with great business sense. Covello's financial examples are also helpful.

Excellent book for any size of company
We used this book by Hazelgren and Covello to spark new planning processes for our company with 66 branches nationwide. Excellent material! ... Read more

Book Description

This complete introduction to the world of Enterprise Resource Planning provides the necessary background for success in today's marketplace. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The complete work of ERP explanation
While they are hundred of SAP or BAAN or J.D. Edwards or Oracle books in the market, only few books were really written in "ERP context". Fortunately, this book is one of few.

The teaching experience told Brady and Monk that "teaching SAP application" to business students was not sufficient to make students understand the "concept of ERP". This is the impression for them to write this book. The foundation of ERP are addressed in business process perspectives; and then, mapped to the ERP process. One "BIG" case-study is used to describe the ERP component, with respect to SAP R/3 system. However, the fundamental is not limited to SAP package since extensions are also provided.

The uniqueness of this book is the combination of "O'Leary's book (ISBN 0521791529)" and "Jacobs & Whybark (ISBN 0072400897)". Like "Why ERP? by Jacobs and Whybark", Brady and Monk use a single case study to describe the ERP in "formal format" (not in novel as Why ERP). Like "O'Leary's book", this book gives the fundamental to understand ERP rather than "implementation of specific package".

Unlike "Why ERP", this book is the formal textbook, very easy to read textbook, not a novel. Unlike "O'Leary's book", this book is the explanation of ERP and interaction of business process, instead of implemenation and outline.

Another major advantage of this book is the easy-well-written is in 200 pages. Graduate students or passion-readers may finish it in one night. This book is also good for ERP introduction (1-3 meetings) for any Production/Operation Management classes or Supply Chain Management.

One thing that I'd like to see more is the "reference". While this book is quite comprehensive, the reference are limited to the CIO (www.cio.com), instead of many existed publications. I wish the authors would do more research in this area and put additional reference in the context in the next edition. ... Read more

Book Description

The Board Member's Playbook--written for board members who are either familiar with or new to John Carver's revolutionary Policy Governance model--offers real-world scenarios that address the challenges that confront boards of all types of organizations. Step by step, the authors walk readers through a proven problem-solving sequence that allows them to find solutions consistent with the values and policies of their organizations. Designed to be flexible, the book's problem-solving methods are applicable to any challenge boards may face. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

An Indispensible Resource
"The Board Member's Playbook..." is an indispensible resource for board members and those interested in policy govenance. The writing is very intelligent, clear, concise; a pleasure to read. A separate section provides a thorough overview of the Carver model for those unfamiliar with policy governance, as well as those needing a refresher. An accompanying CD-ROM is another excellent resource for helping board members with implementation.

This book is a roadmap to success for anyone who uses it. The real world examples and worksheets offer a practical, hands-on exercise in policy govenance. After reading and completing the exercises on my own, I felt well-prepared and energized to take on a board-related challenge using the model.

While this book brings everything a board member needs to effectively use the Carver model, it is the board members themselves who are ultimately responsible for their success. Board members must commit to being honest with themselves and one another, and be dedicated to the rigors of the process to properly implement the Carver model.

This wonderful resource also raises a very important question in my mind - why is the Carver model used predominantly in the non-profit sector? Why isn't the Carver model de rigeur for the for-profit sector? I can only see great benefits and progress ahead should this actually occur.

A Welcomed Addition
A welcomed addition to the "Policy Governance" corpus, "A Board Member's Playbook" provides a clear, concise and easily useable framework for Board practice. Complete with worksheets and an CD Rom, the book helps policy governance Boards work through simulated issues, forming a bridge between the theory of policy governance and its practical application. ... Read more

Book Description

Foreword by Tom Peters

Internationally known management consultants Nicholas Imparato and Oren Harari connect the big picture of our changing civilizations with the specific practical actions that managers have to take to produce results today. All organizations are faced with the same challenge: the need to jump the curve to make significant, discontinuous leaps in their thinking, whether about product, technology, or management style. The alternative to follow current practices all the way to their inevitable decline is unacceptable. The authors show us that it is also unnecessary.

Drawing on numerous personal interviews with innovative leaders around the world, as well as research and first-hand observation, Imparato and Harari identify the four strategic imperatives--innovation, intelligence, coherence, and responsibility--that will enable companies to successfully jump the curve and thrive in the emerging epoch. And they show how cutting-edge companies and leaders are translating these imperatives into action.

Not since the dawn of the Modern Age some five hundred years ago has civilization undergone the kind of profound, rapid-fire changes we're experiencing today. Even organizations that are adapting, growing and innovating have the gnawing sense that obsolescence is right around the corner. Jumping the Curve offers perspective and guidance for doing business at this unique moment in time. It connects the big picture of our changing world with the practical actions managers must take now to position their organizations for success in a new epoch we can't yet fully see or understand.

... Read more

Reviews (3)

A blueprint for the Intelligent Enterprise.
This book is the first to explain how information flow and the management of corporate knowledge changes the nature of business. Unlike business process reengineering and other management fads which treats individuals as cogs in the business machine, this book advances the notion that the intelligence and expertise of the people in an organization define success--and that such intelligence and expertise can be amplified by information technology.

Excellent.
I'm a technologist, and this book is the first to adequately explain the relationship between information technology and business organization--David M. Kalman

Actions for an organization to last into the future.
This book is well grounded and strategically linked to the very existance of organizations in the future.The authors discribe a dynamic process based on values to move any bureaucracy toward cutomer focused success.Read any chapter and reap the benefits, read the whole and fly ... Read more

Book Description

As companies look for ways to unlock shareholder value, restore investor confidence, and adapt to uncertainty, the project portfolio is a smart place to look. Why? Because companies' project initiatives have grown faster than their ability to manage them-affecting the return on trillions of investment dollars while failing to prepare companies for today's unpredictable environment.

Connecting the Dots argues that the portfolio is a company's future currency-the truest measure of organizational intent. And the best way to leverage this currency is through greater alignment.

Simply put, alignment is about better matching the company's portfolio to its objectives and the uncertain environment. Connecting the Dots employs a practical, "play the hand you are holding" approach, providing a balance of concepts and roll-up-your-sleeves guidance on how to:

* Determine how well aligned-or misaligned-an organization is today

* Apply tools that reveal opportunities to reduce portfolio risk while increasing the economics of a company's portfolio

* Instill more adaptive mind-sets to better respond to whatever future presents itself

Executives already know their portfolios are not delivering as expected. This guidebook helps "connect the dots" between an organization's objectives and its project investments, capturing hidden value today while better preparing for tomorrow.

... Read more

Reviews (11)

Insightful with practical advice....worth the read
I read about this book in CFO & CIO so I picked up a copy. For a book written by a professor and a consultant, I found it to be very practical and easy to understand. As a turnaround manager I read a lot of business books and strategy publications and was pleasantly surprised at how approachable, yet valuable the book was. I checked out the documents featured on the book's website (...) and found them to be very useful and comprehensive. In fact, I will probably use some of these documents as frameworks for a project I am currently working on for my client.

Overall, I think the book does a great job at outlining a practical framework and approach to portfolio management. What's more, the book's concepts and tools seem fairly easy to implement....which is always a good thing.

Finally a practical set of IT portfolio management tools!
Connecting the Dots is a great read for anyone working in IT management. It can help you gain better control of your capital expenditures and information technology projects - both critical success factors in our industry.

Some of the ideas in the book are new and some aren't, but the book has done a great job at simplifying these concepts (ie. portfolio management) and making them accessible and usable. Instead of the usual 'pie in the sky' statements, this book dives into a company and illustrates how the tools and frameworks can be used in a typical business. It's refreshing to find the kind of book that can help you manage the execution of these issues.

The book claims that a company's project portfolio is what moves it into the future and provides great tools and techniques that teach you how to get your company to focus on producing business results and think about the bigger picture: where all these projects are actually taking your organization. The book also does a good job at helping you bridge the technology and business sides of an organization even though I could have done without the business history lesson in Chapter 2.

This book can easily be read in two to three hours. I just read it over the weekend and was able to start applying some of the ideas.

Good book on balancing the project portfolio thru process
Many organizations approve any project that sounds like "a good idea". This "soda straw" perspective is a sure way to over-task people, make project cost and delivery unpredictable, and ensure a poor reputation for the organization executing projects. While business leaders do not set out to cripple and distract their organizations, the lack of an institutionalized process frequently yields poor results. While this book addresses the narrow space of project alignment with organizational objectives, the authors propose a framework and tools that organizations with the commitment to follow it through can use to get optimum results from their project portfolio. Specifically, the approach offered by the authors helps organizations align their project portfolio with corporate objectives, align individual projects with one another, and enable organizational flexibility.
The process provides a certain rigor, but those seeking to implement this process in their organization should consider 1) first implementing a functional basic project portfolio management process, 2) ensuring that the process proposed in this book is a good match to their organizational culture, and 3) that in implementing this process they do not over-engineer their project portfolio management process.
Those proposing this process for adoption, or who are conducting a project portfolio alignment workshop, may wish to visit the book Website (HBSP), which has Microsoft PowerPoint slide presentations and graphics available for download. This Website is a useful adjunct to the book.
This is a useful book for project portfolio managers in organizations who want more rigor in their project portfolio management process.

Utility of the Information
The value of the book, in my view, lies in the following attributes:
• The authors present complex ideas in an easy-going, not scholarly style, making the book easy to read. They use graphics to communicate concepts like frameworks and tools, and they employ a case-study approach to illustrate application.
• The framework consisting short- and long-term objectives along with organizational trait objectives provides for a balanced perspective.
• The alignment tools provide an approach to view projects in a portfolio view. This allows the portfolio management team to align projects and the portfolio with organizational direction, improve project efficiency, manage risks, and achieve flexibility.
• The framework and tools consciously align the project portfolio with organizational goals, bringing focus to the portfolio.
• Workshop attendees can use the tools to gain fresh a perspective of projects instead of a traditional, organizational alignment point of view where, say, projects are always associated with the division who sponsors the projects.
• Incorporates a change management perspective by asking how much change an organization can digest in a given time period.
• Supports and promotes program management by forcing analysis of the interdependencies of projects and project deliverables.
• Supports and promotes spiral (iterative development) through the "project chunking" perspective.
• Aids the risk management process by balancing project benefits versus risks in the project proposal and review process.
• Portfolio managers or teams can apply the framework and tools in a step-by-step fashion, reducing anxiety about "how to eat the elephant". This stepwise approach supports workshop breakout sessions.

Application of the Framework and Tools
Several questions arise when one considers if one can apply an authors approach to solving business problems; is the approach practicable.

Position of the Framework in the Larger Project Portfolio Management Context
If the project portfolio management process includes 1) understanding supply and demand (people, money and projects), alignment of decision boards with authority, project assessment, and continuous process improvement (IPS Associates and Stanford APM), this framework fits toward the end of that process spectrum. This book does not describe the overall project portfolio management process, or how to implement project portfolio management in an organization. This book really answers the question "Now that I have a project portfolio management process in place, how do I mature my portfolio alignment and balance process?"

Feasibility, Suitability and Acceptability
For organizations which have implemented project portfolio management and wish for more rigor in the project-business alignment sub-process, this book is a credible offering. One would expect that if a portfolio management team applied all the tools in this book to their portfolio that the result would be 1) a considerable time investment and 2) a better aligned portfolio. The portfolio management team must therefore be willing to take the time to 1) learn several tools and 2) apply the tools in a step-wise and iterative fashion over time.
The framework, tools and examples emphasize application in a business (for profit) context. Practitioners in governmental or other not for profit organizations will need to critically review, tailor and possibly adapt the framework and tools to their purposes.
Organizations with a small number of projects and who have portfolio management team members who are more inclined to make decisions quickly, who are not possessed with an engineering or analytical mindset may think that they do not need or have the patience for such a process. Team members may respond to this approach saying "I'll just use my business experience and common sense to achieve balance in my portfolio". While this statement may or may not be true, I would expect this response in some cultures. One approach to this may be for the portfolio management support office to compile the data, apply the tools, and make a staff recommendation to the portfolio management team for decision.
While the authors bring both academic (McFarlan is a professor) and business experience (Benko is a consultant) to this book, they cite no studies to support the effectiveness of their approach. Therefore, organizations which require empirical evidence of process effectiveness before accepting or implementing a new business process may be resistant to implementing this process.

References, Footnoting and Bibliography
This book is well referenced, footnoted and indexed. This increases the utility of the book for one who has first read and understood the book.
One can often tell when an academic was on the team of authors; the footnoting is excellent, and the Notes section (Benko and McFarlan 221-30) is a useful resource for exploring other sources of information for further research. Specifically, the notes section is ample at nine pages, the lexicon is helpful with three pages of content, and the index is well populated with nine pages of indexed words.

A workable and appealing alignment framework
Consultant Cathleen Benko and business professor McFarlan come into alignment in this tremendously practical book. Today's companies need to bring their misaligned, overlapping, and inconsistent projects into alignment through "frontier living". This means delivering results in the present while adapting for the future's business context by using four "traits" to configure your project portfolio for confusing, volatile, and unpredictable conditions.

The title of the book refers to the need to "connect the dots" between an organization's objectives and its project investments to create and balance present and future value. The book's plethora of tools combined with the easygoing writing style makes it engaging and painless to absorb. Benko and McFarlan can be forgiven for overstating the role of project alignment - that is, after all, the standard book author's tendency. It is true, however, that companies project initiatives total up into the trillions of dollars and it requires no stretch to accept the claim that those initiatives have grown faster than companies' ability to manage them. Benko and McFarlan focus on the project portfolio as the most promising key to unlocking value, arguing that the portfolio is a company's future currency. We find their underlying principle that "companies are better served by adapting themselves for the future rather than by trying to predict its destination" to be a sound one.

Alignment, in this book, specifically means aligning three drivers of business performance: a company's project portfolio with its objectives; the projects in the portfolio to each other; and the portfolio and company's objectives with the ever-changing realities of the business context. To prosper on the "information frontier", certain shifts in mind-set - "traits" - are needed. Along with operational short-term and strategic long-term objectives, these constitute the organization's *intentions*. Four traits are used throughout the book as each of the various tools are explained and applied: Eco-Driven (effective collaborations), Outside-In (looking at yourself the way others look at you), Fighting Trim (agility, coordination, and options orientation to deal with uncertainty and respond to change), and House in Order (provisioning the other traits to enable cross-enterprise collaboration).

The seven alignment tools in this book fall three groups. The Trait Meter assesses, plans, and measures trait development according to the four traits. Once this first step is completed (which includes creating an Intentions Framework), the second group of diagnostic tools comes into play: The Intentions, Sides, and Right Brain tools. These measure the nature and size of the alignment opportunity, identify organizational bias and sort projects into business activities, and identify change capacity issues. The third group of tools - Common Threads, Project Chunking, and What-If Planning - focus on building flexibility into the portfolio.

Working through the book for real will, of course, be far more challenging than merely reading it. But the authors have done a good job of clarifying important issues of alignment and have provided a workable and appealing framework and toolset for tackling those issues.
(3 stars from me is good. 4-star ratings are given too easily.)

Strong, simple decision making for your services portfolio
The strength of this book is it's simplicity and graphical representation of decision frameworks. For most companies this is a strong tool for internal development planning and compliment to Six Sigma initiatives. For consultants, this can be used to plan your services portfolio. Well written and an enjoyable read. ... Read more

Book Description

How to use pricing as a strategic tool to increase revenues and win the war for profit

One of the greatest pitfalls in the war for profits is corporate strategists' lack of a practical understanding of the link between overall revenues and overall costs. In Winning the Profit Game, the thought leaders at A. T. Kearney unveil a revolutionary new approach to establishing clear, strategic links between the top and bottom lines. No dry academic treatise, Winning the Profit Game is a guide to growing profits, in boom times and bust, using smart top-line strategies that optimize price, costs, customer behavior, and volumes. The authors clearly lay out the basic principles involved and also include:

• Proven strategies for transforming added value into revenues and winning the war for profits
• Prescriptive frameworks for putting the principles and strategies into action, immediately
• Numerous success stories based on experiences of A. T. Kearney clients worldwide

Reviews (2)

Newspaper and Electronic press comments on this book
Readers might find the the March 15, 2004 reviews of this book in the Miami Herald and the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram to be useful:

"[The Authors] have produced something analogous to an eagle in the realm of business books... Like an eagle, Winning the Profit Game is distinguished by its farsightedness. Its clear, precise prose soars above that of most business books."

"The opus opens with a musical metaphor, reminding readers that every era has its own music and its own signature instruments: the driving drums and multiple guitar riffs of rock n'roll, the thundering brass of the Swing Era's big bands and the virtuoso string sections of classical music. 'If we make the analogy with business, what skills is emerging even now as the lead instrument of the 2000s? What will be the key to success in an environment that's tougher, more competitive than ever before?' the authors write. Their answer is pricing-- not by itself but integrated with brand, cost management and product development."

The authors cover the waterfront on pricing comprehensively and lucidly [including]Quick Hits for management."

Readers might also wish to know that this book has been mentioned on yahoo.com's Finance website (2/20/04), and on Consultant News's consultant-news.com (2/24/04). Their comments were (respectively):

"... executives reading this book will learn tools to help them... develop an effective, integrated price and brand strategy, use price as a language which speaks to customers [and] optimize price to increase revenue."

"... by putting brand at the center of their framework, the authors challenge the conception of branding as a mysterious function separate from price. Rather, the two are inextricably connected and a superior price strategy cannot exist without a solid brand strategy."

Incidentally, I would not say we put brand at the center of our book. We do give it a lot more attention than any other book on pricing, however.

Hope this is helpful.

Rob Docters
(Co-author)

Maybe the best book yet on pricing and branding
In fact I was surprised at how good it really was. Most business books are nothing more a string of anecodotes and platitudes, whereas here the reader gets a combination of pragmatic detail and genuine insight into what pricing can accomplish if unleashed. A great book to bring to the meeting room since the emphasis is on upper managament getting involved. From a technical perspective, it would appear the authors have spent time in the trenches, not just on their fannies in academia somewhere, as the stategy and tactics they recommend are fresher than anything to be found in Nagle or Dolan. As an example of this check out the chapter on "price as a language" for starters, then go from there. ... Read more

Amazon.com

The Horizontal Organization, by institutional-change specialist Frank Ostroff, is a blueprint for the future development of public and private infrastructures that have outgrown the vertical, or "top-down," hierarchy that has been standard in the business community since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. "It is increasingly apparent that the long-favored vertical model is, by itself, no longer capable of meeting all the different needs of business," Ostroff writes. "It has been rendered inadequate for today's demanding competitive, technological, and workforce environments by its inherent shortcomings." The time is therefore right, he continues, completely to overhaul this outdated corporate structure and prepare for the next 50 years as some major establishments--such as Ford Motor Company's Customer Service Division, Xerox, and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)--already have done.Through well-reasoned arguments and the help of these and other real-world examples, Ostroff convincingly shows how his concepts might be employed to eliminate bureaucracy, improve productivity, and solve common long-term organizational problems. And by presenting the entire picture where only small pieces have previously been revealed, he makes a compelling case for radical change in the corporate world as well as in the public sector and non-profit universe. --Howard Rothman ... Read more

Reviews (6)

A Solid Effort!
The horizontal organization is a more appropriate model for the knowledge age, according to author Frank Ostroff, who says companies increasingly find this structure more effective. He emphasizes the need to start with an understanding of your organization's core competencies and to develop a horizontal structure from there. Ostroff claims this is the first model of this approach, but it is not. In fact, his fairly academic book advances a trend that is already well documented. Horizontal organizations have been covered in numerous other books, which, like this one, promote more decentralized, downsized, team-oriented organizations with empowered workers. Despite a leaden, pedantic writing style, Ostroff distinguishes his theoretical discussion with several detailed examples of how the horizontal organization works and how you can apply it to your company. We ... recommend this book primarily to academics, who may enjoy its theoretical nature.

Enlightened Speculation
The subtitle promises that Ostroff will explain "what the organization of the future actually looks like and how it delivers value to customers." It is more accurate to say that Ostroff suggests what that organization will probably look like...and how it will probably deliver value to customers. Specifically, what he calls the Horizontal Organization "organizes around core process groups. All the people who work on a core process are brought together into a group that can easily coordinate its efforts and maximize the value of of what it delivers to customers." It differs from other models in that it is more comprehensive by incorporating "elements of some of the existing concepts, such as process reengineering, individual empowerment, and teams. But it goes beyond them by providing an overall framework for the organization that integrates and makes use of the best of these ideas in a new structure that has been proved in practice." So, Ostroff's intention is to help his reader understand what the Horizontal Organization is, how it works, how it can be developed, and how to decide where it can be effectively employed in any organization.

I rate this book so highly, not because it provides THE answers but because Ostroff asks what I consider to be the important questions as all of us proceed into an uncertain future. There are so many paradigm shifts occurring simultaneously. Words such as "organization" and "customer" seem to be redefined constantly, as are the concepts of "leader" and "manager" as well as "core business" and "competitive marketplace." Of course, despite what his book's subtitle suggests, Ostroff is well aware of all this. He thinks clearly, writes well, and in his concluding remarks indicates a proper respect for "buy in" throughout any organization., asserting that "the change effort itself and the new organization born from the old must have full top-down, bottom-up, cross-functional commitment. If done right, the integration of the fundamental principles of the horizontal organization will inspire the people in your organization, supercharge their performance, and create a winning value proposition that lifts your organization far above the competition."

Nothing New Here
The Horizontal Organization by Frank Ostroff is well written and an easy read. Its main draw back is that the author is claims that he is presenting something new when in fact it is not. The concept outlined in his book and the design principles for the horizontal organization are nothing but a "dumbed" down version of basic industrial engineering principles that has been espoused for years. The concept of organizing around business processes and with cross-functional teams has been discribed in various books by industrial engineers for years, espesially in the area of socio-technical systems design theory. The book is good in that it gives managers, with business major degrees, a good introduction to a sound organizational design theory. Any manager with an industrial or systems engineering degree will already be aware of these principles for organizational design to a far greater extent than the author.

Very helpful perspective
This is an excellent book with a forward-looking perspective. I found it useful to read RESPONSIBLE MANAGERS GET RESULTS, by Faust, el al, at the same time. The responsibility piece is important to the kind of horizontal organization Orstroff depicts in this book.

One of the business bestsellers of the next millennium!!!
As Tom Brown (the editor of Management General-www.mgeneral.com) rightly writes "a lot of us still think it's normal: whoever has the highest rank in the company, division, department--whatever--calls the shots. Whoever's in command makes the decisions, tells everyone what to do, barks out their assigned tasks in fragmented, functional departments. Frank Ostroff was one of the first people to see that, in the long-term, such a tops-down, command-and-control, function-driven structure was ultimately doomed. So, he (Ostroff) developed The Horizontal Organization about the decade ago. Now, he says, the wold is definitely moving his way."

This exceptional study starts with a vital question: "what will the organization of the future look like?" Naturally, Ostroff's answer is "the Horizontal Organization".

With some real life examples of various types of horizontal organizations like: Ford Motor Company's Customer Service Division, the Xerox Corporation, the General Electric plant in Salisbury, North Carolina, the Supply Management Organization of Motorola's Space and System Technology Group, the Home Finance Division of Barclays Bank, and the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration, Ostroff says "my intention in this book is to help readers understand what the Horizontal Organization is, how it works, how it can be developed, and how to decide where it can be effectively employed in any organization."

This exceptional study is must reading for every business leader to understand the next millennium's organizational structure. ... Read more

Book Description

The book that answers the most fundamental question in business: Where Will I Make a Profit Tomorrow?

Why do some companies create sustained, superior profits year after year? Why are they always far ahead of their competitors in discovering the ever-changing profit zones of their industry? Why do others languish as their traditional way of doing business turns into a no-profit zone? The Profit Zone provides the answers. It is a brilliant, original, and practical explanation of how and why high profit happens. ... Read more

Reviews (38)

A step further in Business Strategy
I read this book in one day...it went over my expectations! You don't stop to find new ideas and concepts about how to run and design a business to keep it in the "Profit Zone", that according to the authors, is the zone where sustainable profit happens. The author introduces the "strategic control" index, as a way to measure of the hability of the company to keep profits coming. Several novelty business designs are also presented, as a way to explain strategic controls and their link to profit.

The book is very well structured. The first part (to my judge the most interesting part) develops and introduces the concepts, theory and models and the second part explains the success of real life companies such as Microsoft, Coca Cola, Charles Schwab, among others, under the light of theses concepts (which explain them great). The last part presents a strategic planning methodology, that threatens classical Balance Scorecard Approach. (I really don't know if any company has already applied this methodology).

You won't regreat to buy it. It's a great purchase! Best business strategy book I have read this year. As Richard D'Aveni says in the praises... you will pray that competitors don't read it!

The Place to Be
In Part One, the authors argue that "market share is dead" as an overall strategy goal. Instead, to achieve sustained growth in profits and shareholder value, companies need a "customer-centric business design" which anticipates and addresses constantly shifting customer priorities. There is no single design which fits all circumstances. but the most effective designs will start with customer priorities.

In Part Two, the co-authors shift their attention to several "reinventors" who have achieved extraordinary success. Most are familiar: Welch, Hayek, Goizueta, Schwab, Grove, Eisner, Hatsopoulos, Barnevik, and Gates. However, and this is an excellent example of the book's unique and substantial value, Slywotzy & Morrison note that "the principles and techniques of reinveniting a company's business design to get it into the industry's profit zone...apply with equal force to small companies, to divisions of larger companies, and to the middle managers who run them. In fact, the reinventors we will be reading about in the future are already honing their skills at innovative business designs today." The authors then examine several smaller firms such as Madden Communications, Cardboard Box, Inc., and Clozaril Patient Management System.

In Part Three, the authors provide a "handbook" which explains in detail how innovation works.This book is relevant to all organizations (both for-profit and non-profit) which seek to increase their economic value. Non-profits must also make critically important decisions (such as those involving allocation of resources) if they are to achieve their objectives. The appendices provide additional guidance so that the reader can implement whichever of the book's ideas and suggestions are most relevant.

If optimizing your organization's profits is your destination, here's a map to get there.

A MUST HAVE!!
EXCELLENT BOOK! One of thee best business books. The book is well structured. All the strategic business models are well detailed with real world applications. Clearly illustrates how the most formidable business gurus have used various strategy models to migrate to profitability and isolate competitors. You will go into the realm of overpowering companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Coca Cola, to name a few.
When you have a book that is highlighted and filled with scribbled notes in almost every page than you know you have a winner. Can hardly wait for the next book by these two great authors.

Top
Be sure that if you don't like this book, it's not because of the bad contents. Remarkable book, must read.

Get into the profit zone
The Profit Zone is an intriguing read. This book is the precursor to Value Nets, but is still a great read. The book starts out by getting you focused on your customer, but quickly switches gears to ensuring that you are capturing profit for the value that you are providing. If your industry is changing quickly and margins are falling this book is well worth a read!

One of the most useful sections of this book is the one covering different profit models. The book covers 22 different profit models. For example, Product Pyramid Profit, which is basically having products tailored to customers desires that cover customer income and preferences. An example of this would be GM, which sells cars, but varies features and prices (Chevy to Cadillac) to cover a range of customer incomes.

One of the revelations of this book is that many of these profit models may have a five to seven year life (or shorter). Having a range of profit models allows the reader to see how to apply several profit models or understand transitions from profit model to another.

The Profit Zone is basically broken in three sections:

The first lays out the importance of the customer and the component that make up a business model. See Value Net review for more details, but basically value proposition, scope, profit capture and strategic control.
The second section is extremely useful in that is shows business that have due to changes in their industry or customers have had to recreate their profit model. Companies such as GE, Microsoft, Charles Schwab as well as others are used as case studies in business design reinvention.
The third section is a toolkit for apply "profit zone" thinking to your business.

The Profit Zone does a great job in highlighting that business is always changing and the areas where you can make money and sustain high profits are changing with it. The profit models in this book are further developed in a follow on book called Profit Patterns. Profit Patterns greatly expands the list of profit models and looks at them in greater detail. ... Read more

Book Description

THE HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PAPERBACK SERIES is designed to bring today's managers and professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world.Here are the landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required reading for ambitious business people in organizations around the globe.

This essential reference is for readers who need to stay up-to-date on the new rules and evolving ideas that are shaping today's corporate strategies.1. TOC: Creating Corporate Advantage by David J. Collis and Cynthia A. Montgomery 2. Competing on Resources: Strategy in the 1990s by David J. Collis and Cynthia A. Montgomery 3. Desperately Seeking Synergy by Michael Goold and Andrew Campbell 4. The End of Corporate Imperialism by C.K. Prahalad and Kenneth Lieberthal 5. Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World by Stuart L. Hart 6. Why Focused Strategies May Be Wrong for Emerging Markets by Tarun Khanna and Krishna G. Palepu 7. Competing on Capabilities: The New Rules of Corporate Strategy by George Stalk, Philip Evans, and Lawrence E. Shulman 8. Corporate Strategy: The Quest for Parenting Advantage by Andrew Campbell, Michael Goold, and Marcus Alexander About the Contributors

Index ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Theories on Strategy backed by real life examples.
This is another excellent collection of essays from Harvard Business Review and the topic is Corporate Strategy. 8 essays in a little less than 250 pages address various corporate strategies that can be useful if you are in a similar situation.

These are very interesting theories and it is fascinating to read them with all the real life examples. If you don't enjoy pure strategy, some of the material may feel dull though. This book goes into the guts of what makes for good corporate strategy. It starts out with a chapter on Creating Corporate Advantage where you are exposed to examples of companies that leveraged their multibusiness capabilities extremely well to create a serious corporate advantage (the companies are Tyco International, Sharp, The Newell Company, and Saatchi and Saatchi).

The book then moves on to the strategy in the 1990s with a focus on competing on resources. Five tests are put forward that should help determine if a resource can qualify to be the basis for an effective strategy.

The rest of the book addresses topics such as Synergy, Strategies for a Sustainable World, Emerging Markets, Competing on Capabilities, Parenting Advantage (the kind of businesses a company should own), etc.

Overall, the book has some very serious discussions on Corporate Strategies. Some of these may not be as relevant to the particular situation you are in, but most would be if you work in a large organization. I picked up the book to see what I could learn on strategy for small businesses but this isn't the book for that. Though these lessons could be applied when the small business starts transforming into a large business. Bottom line - this book is an interesting read especially if you are in an MBA program or are part of the upper management of a large corporation. Enjoy!

First mover advantage on corporate strategy research?
Many scholors have been researching in corporate strategy so far.And now this theme seems to be coming back.Too much emphasis on competitive strategy and business strategy of business units are likely criticized indeed. Mulibusiness corporations really need the optimal fit between corporate strategy and business strategy.This book is the one of challenging and quick respoce to that trend. The faster The better..... I don't know.But difinitely it is worth while reading for practitioner and researchers in this field. Including A.D.Chandler's discussion, outstanding papers of harvard business review are contained. Probably you will find new standpoint of academic field. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Recall the old saying about all work and no play making Jack a dull boy? World-class companies today need play--serious play--if they want to make truly innovative products, argues Michael Schrage, an MIT Media Lab fellow and Fortune magazine columnist. In Serious Play he writes, "When talented innovators innovate, you don't listen to the specs they quote. You look at the models they've created." Whether it's a spreadsheet that tests a new financial model or a foam prototype of a calculator, what interests Schrage is not the model itself, but the behavior that play--be it modeling, prototyping, or simulation--inspires.

Schrage examines the approaches to successful prototyping at companies such as AT&T, Boeing, Microsoft, and DaimlerChrysler and describes the kind of culture that's needed for encouraging innovation. In the last chapter, he lays out the 10 rules of serious play, including: Be willing to fail early and often; know when the costs outweigh the benefits; know who wins and who loses from an innovation; build a prototype that engages customers, vendors, and colleagues; create markets around prototypes; and simulate the customer experience. Well-written and inspiring, Serious Play, is a first-rate user's guide for managers, project leaders, and other innovators. --Dan Ring ... Read more

Reviews (17)

Serious Play is Serious Fun
Prototypes, simulations, beta versions, these, according to author Michael Schrage, are the stuff of Serious Play.

Serious Play is a book that I found myself taking very seriously in deed. Its well-researched, highly readable pages gave me a framework for understanding so much of my own experiences, both in the development of games and the development of technography, that I found myself having genuinely serious fun reading and rereading this remarkably intelligent little book.

The subtitle, "how the world's best companies simulate to innovate," explains a great deal of the power of Schrage's vision. His is a deep, and firmly rooted understanding of the emergence of a key practice for doing business in the new economy. He draws his insights from Microsoft and Disney, Boeing and Shell, top design firms and winners of the America's Cup.

Designing games, I learned over and over again the value of a good prototype. No matter how clear my vision or how carefully sketched and documented the game might be, the only way I could successfully communicate the concept was by giving people something they could actually play with. At Ideal Toys, the toy and game designers worked next to the model making group. At Mattel Multimedia we had a whole division of people who spent their days creating storyboards or prototyping our ideas in Director. The more detailed and functional the prototype, the more successfully I was able to engage my programmers, my designers, my marketers, my bosses, my salespeople, and my audiences in the design and development of a truly innovative game.

"Prototypes," explains Schrage, "should turn customers, clients, colleagues and vendors into collaborators...That's why such invitations should emphasize play...errors can be captured before they become obstacles, serendipity becomes a colleague. The more flexible and dynamic the prototype, the more flexible and dynamic the play -- and the greater the opportunities for profitable innovation."

The efficacy of the outliner as a tool for supporting collaborative work can be explained by thinking of the dynamic outline itself as a prototyping tool. Every technography-enabled consultation has at its heart the goal of helping people play with their ideas.

Schrage quotes British management professor David Lane: "Rather than attempting to take the position 'I am an expert in techniques that will teach you about your business,' the consultant should offer a process in which the ideas of the team are brought out and examined in a clear and logical way."

Technography works because it gives people the chance to see their words on screen, and then to play with their ideas, to organize and reorganize, iterate and reiterate, until they are able to synthesize individual views into a coherent, well-structured vision.

When I first met Michael Schrage and demonstrated technography to him, he was so moved by the power of what he experienced that he wound up writing Shared Minds. Today, reading Serious Play, I find my own ideas "brought out and examined in a clear and logical way," and myself moved to a new and clearer perspective on my work. As Tom Peters says of Serious Play, it is "simply the best book on innovation I've ever read."

Questions, questions (and not so many answers)
I'm not sure of Michael Schrage's actual background in this field, but from the book, I got the impression that he's more of an academic/writer than someone actually deeply immersered in this process of "serious play" (prototyping or modeling).

He certainly provides some useful tips and advice about the modeling or prototying process yet, for me, I found the book coming up short.

One device the writer uses is to consistently ask the reader questions about the modeling/prototyping process, i.e."Is it better for a company to do more [modeling] iterations to perfect the product, or to use less and send the product quickly to market with less iterations, but beating the competition?" While this is an effective device in getting the reader to realize that these are very real questions any company will face in using extensive prototyping, unfortunately, Mr. Schrage doesn't really provide much guidance or assistance in how companies have arrived at conclusions regarding these issues.

I'd like to ask Mr. Schrage, "How have these companies resolved these issues?, What kind of metrics do they use to decide those types of questions relating to decisions surrounding the prototyping process?" Maddeningly, these issues are never substantively dealt with.

As Mr. Schrage informs the reader on page 201 (near the end of the book, but the start of a brief 13 page "User's Guide") ... "A time-pressed innovator hungry to benefit from serious play might prefer a book entitled 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Innovators' or 'The One-Minute Modeler'. This is not that book."

I agree with that statement.

Three years on, still a great book
Here's the best review I can give Michael Schrage's "Serious Play": Three years on, it's consistently the first book I pull out of my bookshelf when I'm looking for ideas for presentations, thoughts on introducing new products or services, etc. His commentary on "mean-time-to-payback" is something that will stick with you for years. It's brilliant stuff, written in clear, concise terms. And, surprisingly, very little of it is dated. Unlike many books from that era, there's no .com or Enron fixation for the author to be embarrassed about. Schrage's examples are pulled from health care technology, animation, theater...in short, an eye-opening spectrum of ideas. I consider "Serious Play" one of my best purchases ever.

Preaching to the choir
This is a good book for someone to read if they are skeptical of the benefits of prototypes. However, since I already know the value of interactive prototypes I became quickly tired with the book.

Other critiques: it felt like the author had a bunch of cool little examples lying around and finally got the idea to put it together, surrounded by some fluffy text to make it thick enough to sell as a book, and put it on the market. Lots of space is taken up by these excerpts, as well as big text in the margins summing up "important points," which I would usually find useful but instead gave the impression of just taking up space.

Also, the author makes repeated use of similes to the point that it got annoying; "Just like a is to b, c is to d."

At one point, the author brings up the difference between a "simulation" and a "prototype," and just when you think the core of the matter is going to be distinguished the author backs out, leaving you wondering why they brought it up in the first place if they weren't going to take a stab at defining and differentiating them.

Sorry, but given the hype I was sorely disappointed. Read the first chapter or so in a bookstore before actually buying this.

Enlightening
This book gave me a very good and new insight of how to manage prototyping. It is enlightening for not only it explains and lists the topics that are important. It also gives us lots of practical examples of implementations. ... Read more

Book Description

Lessons from China's leading entrepreneurs on competing in unpredictable markets

U. S. entrepreneurs from Bill Gates to Michael Dell have been studied and emulated by executives worldwide. Yet we know next to nothing about the pioneers who are reshaping the world's second largest economy: China. In the face of murky ownership structures, inconsistent access to capital, shifting industrial policy, and other obstacles, an elite few Chinese firms have thrived during the turbulence of the last decade.

In Made in China, Donald N. Sull profiles eight of these formidable ventures to reveal the secrets behind their surprising success. Based on extensive research, including in-depth interviews and access to corporate archives, Made in China explores these entrepreneurs' winning strategies, from how they anticipate and maneuver through emerging threats and opportunities ("active waiting"), to how they manage risks, to how they consistently out-execute rivals. Taken together, these principles represent a comprehensive model for managing in unpredictable environments worldwide.

An insider's look at the playbook of some of the world's savviest and most resilient entrepreneurs, Made in China is essential reading for companies operating in China or in any volatile industry or market.

Donald N. Sull is an Associate Professor of Management Practice at London Business School. Previously an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Sull was also a consultant at McKinsey & Company, Inc. He advises both multinational firms and new ventures in several countries.

... Read more

Reviews (2)

An Imperative Book for Any Company
Setting our mission statement had our company had us knocking heads until we picked up Mr. Abrahams' book. "Mission Statement Book; 301 Corporate Mission Statements from America's Top Companies" is a must for any dot.com company.

Excellent Reference
This book is a very helpful brain-storming tool. You're making work for yourself if you write a mission statement without consulting it. ... Read more

Book Description

In this definitive and revealing history, Henry Mintzberg, the iconoclastic former president of the Strategic Management Society, unmasks the press that has mesmerized so many organizations since 1965: strategic planning. One of our most brilliant and original management thinkers, Mintzberg concludes that the term is an oxymoron -- that strategy cannot be planned because planning is about analysis and strategy is about synthesis. That is why, he asserts, the process has failed so often and so dramatically.

Mintzberg traces the origins and history of strategic planning through its prominence and subsequent fall. He argues that we must reconceive the process by which strategies are created -- by emphasizing informal learning and personal vision -- and the roles that can be played by planners. Mintzberg proposes new and unusual definitions of planning and strategy, and examines in novel and insightful ways the various models of strategic planning and the evidence of why they failed. Reviewing the so-called "pitfalls" of planning, he shows how the process itself can destroy commitment, narrow a company's vision, discourage change, and breed an atmosphere of politics. In a harsh critique of many sacred cows, he describes three basic fallacies of the process -- that discontinuities can be predicted, that strategists can be detached from the operations of the organization, and that the process of strategy-making itself can be formalized.

Mintzberg devotes a substantial section to the new role for planning, plans, and planners, not inside the strategy-making process, but in support of it, providing some of its inputs and sometimes programming its outputs as well as encouraging strategic thinking in general. This book is required reading for anyone in an organization who is influenced by the planning or the strategy-making processes. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

The Other View
Henry Mintzberg is, as always, the iconoclast. It is well worth reading any book he writes because, invariably, he presents an alternative perspective on how business and how organisations work, generally one which drives from the combined power of both a theoretician and an experimentalist - a rare breed indeed.

The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning is no exception. It is a book about finding a general theory of strategic planning which, given that the search is rooted in Mintzberg's observations of what actually happens in the real world, has the potential for practical application.

His perspectives make one's understanding of the subject more complete; they promote one's ability to balance a potentially narrow view of the world with something richer. It doesn't really matter whether you think Mintzberg right or wrong, spot-on or off-beam, at least you have an alternative view. There are so many tidbits in his books that you invariably pick up something of worth.

From my own perspective, having read through (and intending to continue to read) the book on many occasions in my own attempts to implement some strategic planning concepts, I draw my own conclusions about two of Mintzberg's perspectives which I feel are worth commenting on.

Firstly, he takes the unique view of dividing the conventional planning model vertically along budget, objective, strategy and program lines (rather than cascading traditionally through corporate, business and functional lines down to actions). I have found, after much toying with this perspective, that it amounts to an hypothesis on how strategic planning actually works, and nothing more. His book focuses on expounding that exploratory hypothesis and, to some extent, because he focuses so heavily on it and because it is such a novel way of looking at things, it actually tends to make one forget that it is only a hypothesis. After many readings, I'm not sure how much the perspective enlightens and how much it obscures - that is the nature of hypotheses.

Secondly and finally, Mintzberg provides his own outline of how to pursue strategic planning using a three step model. Alas, and disappointingly, the model provides little practical guidance at the end of the day. It is far too vague, far too removed from everyday requirements. It also suffers from the absence of an actual example of its application. Then again, that's not what the book was about - although I was hoping.

Thank you Henry Mintzberg for the insight. The book is worth every cent for that alone.

"Must" Reading for Executives
Even if you don't agree with Henry Mintzberg, this is "must" reading for executives. It is thought-provoking for the individual reader; and it is a great discussion starter for a management team. I highly recommend it!

Dr. Michael Beitler
Author of "Strategic Organizational Change"

A Fundamental Look at How Managers Should Think
The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning is an important book, whose significance goes well beyond its subject. Most leaders, managers, and companies have adopted methods of deciding what to do and how to implement them without considering the fundamental assumptions and experiences with those methods. In essence, this important knowledge work is back where the planning of manual work was before Frederick Taylor. What he says has implications for quality, production planning, capacity expansions, new product design, IT, and many ohter functions, processes and activities.

Before you dismiss this point as being merely of academic interest, consider several of Mintzberg's more telling points: Forecasting is seldom accurate for long; creating intense alignment in the wrong direction can make a company vulnerable to sudden shifts in the market; formal staffs can simply create political games; and thinking that is not linked into the important processes of the company will have limited impact. If those points are right, what does it mean about how work should be performed in your organization?

Having been there and done that as both a strategic planner in the early 1970s and a strategy consultant before that, I recognize the disease as he diagnoses it. In fact, many of the people he quotes and evaluates are people I know. I also saw many of the companies improve themselves by doing less planning.

You can only cover so much in one book, but the potential of strategic work is to improve significant communications, thinking and action in the enterprise. That can help eliminate the significant stalls that delay progress. If Professor Mintzberg decides to do a second edition of this book, I hope he will do more with those subjects.

What has been disappointing to me and others who are familiar with the problems that strategic planning has experienced is the lack of alternatives being proposed. Mintzberg has proposed one, but it is pretty primitive. It just gets rid of some of the wasted motion in strategic planning, without building on success.

One of the few advanced processes that I know of is one that I co-authored in the soon-to-be-published, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise. If you are interested in that subject, take a look at that book's introduction.

I was pleased to see Mintzberg challenge Michael Porter to choose a method for selecting among paths for a business or company. When I first read Porter, I felt he waffled on that point, too. My research and experience strongly suggest that paths that leave you better off regardless of the unexpected changes you could experience work best. To locate those paths can be made systematic, as a way of helping people apply both analysis and intuition to finding better alternatives. That is what strategic planning should have focused on. I agree with Mintzberg in assigning importance to the generation of new and better alternatives as one potential benefit of strategy work, whether done by the line executive, a staff person, a consultant, or all of the above together.

I especially liked his awareness of the need for commitment. Involvement is a necessary part of gaining commitment, and the strategy processes that many use misses that important connection.

The book could have been improved, however, by doing some field work with companies which developed strategies that prospered well beyond their peers and seeming potential. What did they do that helped to create these results? Or was it a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day? Without answering that question, Mintzberg leaves us back in the pre Frederick Taylor days, except with a better idea of what does not work.

I have done substantial unpublished research on just that question. It is clear that there are several models that companies have used successfully to develop better strategies, implement them well, adapt to changes in a timely manner, and build systematically on success. I suggest you consider Clear Channel Communications as a company that focuses on rethinking the basic business model, Southwest Airlines as a company that achieves a superior cost position and efficiently transfers benefits from that to all stakeholder groups, and Linear Technology as a company that follows a strategy that should allow it to prosper regardless of the shifts in things it cannot stop or control.

No review of this book would be complete without noting that Mintzberg's persistent skepticism makes for some pretty humorous reading (unless you are one of the writers or planners he is questioning). Be sure you take time to enjoy the subtle humor in his writing.

Well done, Professor Mintzberg! I think this is the best work about how managers should manage their fundamental thinking that I have seen in the last 20 years.

You should be sure to read this book both to understand the lessons of strategic planning and what that implies for other thinking processes in your enterprise. You management education will not be complete until you do.

The Realities of the Real Life
I have read varied books and articles of Mintzberg. All of them convey the realities of the real organizations, not fictions of varied writers and quick-fixer management consultants. This book is about the formal strategic planning school. Mintzberg carefully and with a great detail put the basic assumptions of formal planning under the microscope. Mintzberg especially questioning the assumption that is formal planning is the best way to create strategy and formulation and implementation can be seperated. This book is a good source for people to want to move from fictions and academic rhetoric to the strong and real realities. I advice this book for all sane and realist creatures. Thanks Mintzberg...

If you don't have a solution to the problem, simply shut up!
The best of the book is it low price. After 300 pages Mintzberg still missed the point why strategic planning failed in reality. Strategic planning was always done in centralized staff department, never done at the operational level of business units. Strategic planning is quiet easy and not rocket science. So just have to convince and train business unit managers in it. Mintzberg is an academic gibberish talker, who probably did not spent a minute working at the operational level of an typical business unit. He mostly wasted his time doing small talk with CEO's. ... Read more

Book Description

Whether you’re starting a new business or expanding an existing one, this updated guide will help you create a financial, organizational, and operational blueprint for success! Now you can put the expertise of the leading professionals at Ernst & Young to work for you and your company with this complete guide to researching, writing, and presenting a winning business plan. This practical guide leads you carefully through every aspect involved in planning and development—illustrating each step with a realistic sample that shows you exactly what you’ll need. You’ll get the nuts-and-bolts of formatting and design…techniques on how to tailor your plan to the various people and institutions who will review it…new information on funding and financing methods…and special provisions for restructuring and bankruptcy…and the influence of new laws and regulations. Totally updated and revised, this Second Edition also tells you what to include as attachments to your business plan…discusses the impact of information technology on keeping your business plan up-to-date…and presents a new section on how to include buying a company in your business plan. Clear, comprehensive and authoritative, The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide, Second Edition will help you put together a winning, successful business plan. Ernst & Young is the leading international professional services firm, with 65,000 people in more than 600 cities in over 100 countries, including 24,000 people in more than 100 U.S. cities. A founder and continuing sponsor of the "Entrepreneur of the Year" award, Ernst & Young has unique professional resources that enable it to serve both the great number of Fortune 500 companies and more owner-managed and entrepreneurial businesses than any other Big 6 accounting firm. The firm is also the author of the best selling The Ernst & Young Tax Guide, The Ernst & Young Guide to Total Cost Management, The Ernst & Young Guide to Raising Capital, and many more business-oriented books. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

This book is my bible
This book says it all very concisely, no fluff. I've written three business plans with it. Read a chapter in the book, write a chapter of the plan. The examples are very good. I just hit $1MM in sales on my third try - I give this book a lot of credit for helping me get organized.

Good explanations, but ....
This book explains the business plan in sufficient detail to let you understand what is needed