Customer Reviews

Commitment: The Dynamic of Strategy

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book seemed a perfect match for my personal collection and knowledge base when I bought it. I have been a strategy consultant for one of the largest strategy practices in the world for a number of years, and I have both undergradudate and graduate degrees with concentrations in business policy and industrial economics. I am also an avid consumer of strategy content and material.

I am writing this review to set the record straight: do not purchase this book expecting a clear, engaging and pragmatic perspective on strategy design and implementation. Rather, what you will get is a muddled discourse on a fairly arcane theory of strategy ("commitment"), with some supporting content on how traditional strategic frameworks (i.e., success factors) have failed to deliver.

I'm not going to comment on the technical arguments Ghemawat presents to support the concept of "commitment;" the book is full of them, and I am sure they are probably right. What I will say is that, after I was about 50% through reading the book, I was still not excited, nor entirely convinved, that this "commitment" perspective was any profound revelation. As a matter of fact, I was quite bored. The book came across to me as the obligatory text a professor must write to maintain relevance in his field, yet in the process, he must also stretch an already-thin proposition ("commitment") too far to produce a 150-page book.

I mean, how revolutionary is the idea that the stickiness, and thus sometimes success, of a strategic position, is purely the result of the firm's inexorable "commitment" to the strategy.

Things I missed in this book and thought I would find: how truly relevant and correct is the concept of "sustainability" as firms develop, implement and switch strategies with ever-increasing speed; what is a robust and pragmatic framework for judging the relative defensibility of two strategic positions (kind of a 5-forces model for the 1990s); and, what are some new, novel ways to measure how business value accrues to the firm as a strict function of strategic design and implementation (as compared to the value generated from operational effectiveness).

This book was published in the early 1990's. The claim on the inside back cover states that the book "will become required reading for thoughtful practioners..." because of its value. I would say the resulting lack of interest in the "commitment" perspective, as evidenced in both the academic and popular business press, suggests that this statement will never come true.

This is easily the most boring book ever written on Strategy! It adds little or no new value, whatsoever. Ghemawat, seems to specialize in taking extremely simple concepts and twisting them into unintelligent gibberish. I bought this book hoping that a famous Harvard Business School proffesor would have some insights; I was disappointed from page 2. Buy this book only if you are: (i) Billing your client while you learn the basics of strategy (and common sense) or (ii) a HBS student taking Ghemawat's class. In the latter case "May God be with you (because no consulting company will be!)."

This book is so good that most readers without serious strategy or industrial economics background will not completely understand it. However, it's thesis is one of the few really new concepts in competitive strategy to come out since 1980. The book is not a theoretical work, but rather helps the reader understand how strategic committments can be used to sustain competitive advantage. A must for any well read businessperson, consultant, or MBA student.

Ghemawat improves upon the traditional competitive strategy concepts in order to help determine how to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage. The framework developed does provide an aid in the evaluation of strategic alternatives that is especially useful for major investment decisions. I suspect that further improvements on this framework in the sense of cuantitative support may come from developments within the realm of Real Options. Note: This review may be influenced by the fact that I took the strategy course of Pankaj Ghemawat at business school.