Strategic Renaissance: New Thinking and Innovative Tools to Create Great Corporate Strategies...Using Insights from History and Science [Hardcover]

Evan M. Dudik (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2000

New Thinking and Innovative Tools to Create Great Corporate Strategies ...Using Insights from History and Science

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Evan M. Dudik, Ph.D. (Portland, OR) heads the consulting firm Evan M. Dudik & Associates, which helps companies create winning business strategies. He was previously a consultant with the prestigious international consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM (May 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814405517
• ISBN-13: 978-0814405512
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #881,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strategic Renaissance, May 16, 2000

By 

George Gabriel (Beaverton Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strategic Renaissance: New Thinking and Innovative Tools to Create Great Corporate Strategies...Using Insights from History and Science (Hardcover)

As a small businessman living the "American Dream", I don't get the opportunity to read as much as I would like. That's why I'm very pleased to have spent some precious time with "Strategic Renaissance" by Evan M. Dudik. While receiving some valuable insights into refining strategies for my business, I was also entertained with the connections Mr. Dudik made with classical philosophy, science, and especially, military history.

In addition to the inspiration to re-engage my intellect, the book offers some practical checklists and useful tools to construct a better strategic planning process for my company. I especially appreciate the exposure to three of the themes in the book:

1. The development of an "if-then" quantifiable approach to analysis of strategies that creates the challenge to falsify the underlying hypotheses;

2. The utilization of the time tested "pivot and hammer" strategies to defend against and attack direct competitors, especially those with numerical superiority; and

3. Ways of dealing with corporate culture while making necessary strategic moves.

I highly recommend this book as a management tool - and an interesting read!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A strategic approach to philosophy, history and business, January 4, 2001

By 

"fim" (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strategic Renaissance: New Thinking and Innovative Tools to Create Great Corporate Strategies...Using Insights from History and Science (Hardcover)

Strategic Renaissance, by Evan M. Dudik, gives us a new understanding of how to characterize effective strategy. Mr. Dudik has a great blend of philosophical, historical, business, strategic experience and insight. His practical applications based on his career are very interesting to me and should also be to many other readers.

Strategic Renaissance takes a look at many strategic characteristics of war, business, science and other fields of human endeavor ring the past one the last millennium No CEO will dispute the traditional strategic factors of geography, transportation, cost, price, culture and people. These factors will remain increasingly dynamic as a result of technology.

Therefore, no strategy, regardless of its current success, can sustain itself indefinitely. Dudik helps the reader define a agenda for identifying the continuing process of creating and re-creating successful business strategies.

Strategic Renaissance is very easy to pick up and read. Mr. Dudik's humor and real life experiences make it a refreshing book to read. I found it hard to put it down. It prepares it readers to consider strategic adaptation not as failure but as necessary for continued survival and success.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Birth and Rebirth, May 13, 2000

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strategic Renaissance: New Thinking and Innovative Tools to Create Great Corporate Strategies...Using Insights from History and Science (Hardcover)

This book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of how to formulate and then implement the most appropriate strategies. Dudik seems to have covered every element of the formulation/implementation process. Here are the titles of the eleven chapters:

What Strategy Has Learned from Astrology and What It Needs to Learn from Science

"Only Make the Right Wing Strong": The Four Key Elements of a Successful Strategy

Strategic Anatomy: Strategy's Hammer and Pivot

The End of an Era: The Twilight of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Making Strategy Dynamic: The Dawn of Opportunity Creation and Exploitation

Better Tools for Better Strategies: Creating, Testing, and Falsifying Strategic Ideas

Strategic Breakthrough and Exploitation: Making the Right Choices and Choosing the Right Tools

Destroying Resources: Tools for Exploitation

Born Allies and Sworn Enemies: Corporate Strategy Meets Corporate Culture

Top Management Teamwork: Tools for Harmonizing Strategy and Culture

81 Do's and Don'ts on the Road to a Great Strategy

When appropriate, I list a book's table of contents in a review because the reader of that review does not have immediate access to such information online, as she or he would when browsing in a bookstore. The titles of Dudik's chapters correctly indicate how thorough his coverage is. The notes beneath each title are also revealing. For example, consider those for the final chapter: "No matter what you've read elsewhere, there is no silver bullet, there is no royal road to great strategic success. It's a matter of inspiration, insight, falsification, and perspiration. Nevertheless, there are crucial do's and don'ts that can maximize your chances of success." Dudik provides 81.

If your organization lacks "great strategic success" and thus needs a rigorous yet creative process by which to achieve it, this book will be invaluable. Here's one of several ways to derive the greatest benefit from it. Have the key people in your organization (whatever its size or nature) read this book. Schedule a one-day offsite meeting and base the agenda on the sequence of 11 chapters. Have each participant come prepared to correlate the key points made in each chapter with the organization's current circumstances. Also, to discuss (specifically) what must be done to achieve "great strategic success." This book can not only help set the agenda but also guide and inform discussion of subjects on that agenda. Dudik's "Hammer and Pivot Model" will also be helpful to individual executives who are eager to improve the quality of their strategic thinking.

This is a superb achievement.