Competitive Strategy Dynamics [Hardcover]

Kim Warren (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471899496 | ISBN-13: 978-0471899495 | Publication Date: August 26, 2002 | Edition: 1

This book offers a practical, fact-based approach to explain how enterprises deliver performance over time. Rigorous methods explain how to quantify the growth, decline and interdependence within the organisation's resources and capabilities as well as the continuous interactions with competitors and other external factors. These methods create clear and practical pictures of the strategic architecture driving earnings and other performance outcomes, not just for commercial firms, but for non-profit cases too. Management is then well-equipped to answer three crucial questions in their strategy development : why has the business performed as it has to date? where is performance headed in the future if we carry on as now? and how can we alter this future for the better? The book provides the basis for an entire course on the time-based perspective on competitive strategy, connecting strongly to established static frameworks. Alternatively it offers a vital missing component for existing courses in strategy and general management, as well as a key reference text for professionals in corporate development, consulting and business analysis.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...many valuable ideas..." (Long Range Planning, Vol 37 2004)

From the Inside Flap

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 346 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (August 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471899496
• ISBN-13: 978-0471899495
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,455,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Systems dynamics for top management, January 31, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Competitive Strategy Dynamics (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book for business managers not for expert models developpers. Much has been written on system dynamics that can hardly be applied to the world of business. Warren has translated a complicated theory into a graspable subject with a step-by-step approach that will help senior management integrate system dynamics into their thinking. It is then up to managers to require the help of expert consultants to build the model, the object of most of the litterature on system dynamics.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent approach to strategy, December 11, 2002

By 

"justin1028" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Competitive Strategy Dynamics (Hardcover)

The book is an excellent synthesis of the resource based view of strategy with system dynamics. It presents an easy to follow process for implementing strategy dynamics in an organization. The development of a strategic architecture allows companies to cleary identify all resources, both tangible and intangible, and ensure that all inflows and outflows associated with these flows are running smoothly.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good follow on book.............., July 30, 2003

By 

An avid reader (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Competitive Strategy Dynamics (Hardcover)

This is a good follow on book specifically addressing the strategic management issues. To really understand and apply this book, one must have read "Business Dynamics by Sterman".

Otherwise this is a good book giving a very refreshing approach to strategy management that has strong underlying mathematical foundations. Another plus for this book is by using system dynamics, that has been around for 40+ years and still going strong, as the underlying approach, it has made its shelf life longer (unlike most management theories that end up as "flavor of the week").

A must for anyone interested to read, know about, practice strategic management