Customer Reviews

Future Focus: How 21 Companies are Capturing 21st Century Success

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The first company authors take up is 3Com. Please check out the stock market curve for 3Com. (take a ten year duration to even out speculations and short surges) What do you see? A spike in 96-97 period and then a bigger spike in 2000. And what after that, the stock keeps going down.
Now repeat this for Applied Materials, Inc, their second company. What do you see. Again a spike in 2000 and after that a decline.
Not yet satisfied try Bertelsmann AG – Güterslosh, their third company although it's difficult to find it's stock price charts. But Cisco Systems, their fourth example, is an easy target. Again what do you find. Spike, making you nostalgic ain't it.
No matter what the funda, in the entire financial history no one has, nor will ever be able to, defy the ultimate acid test i.e. the long term stock price curve.
I find the correlation between year 2000 and the authors' Focus companies hard to ignore. For every logical conjuncture behind success there is a counter argument. A bunch of salt is recommended.

Ries does it again. His no-nonsens approach to marketing rises above the rest in "Future Focus." Ries gets back to the basics of marketing showing how through simple ideas, you can dominate your market. He shows what companies have done to become world class leaders and points out what they usually do that makes them loose their position. This book is a must read for every business owner and executive on the decision making level. Just keep it out of your competitors hands.