Customer Reviews

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

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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!

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.

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.

In preparation for a class on strategic thinking, I read through many sources including a number of books on strategic thinking. The first thing that struck me was what a refreshing read Strategic Renaissance was compared to all of the other drones I had read. Dudik's book is lively and clear and extremely easy to follow.

But what made the book so enjoyable was the freshness of his approach. After years in consulting, Dudik has arrived at his own conclusions that bring energy and vitality to the field. From his four key elements of a successful strategy, to the hammer and pivot, to the end of the sustainable competitive advantage, to the creation of dynamic strategy, Dudik lays out a thoughtful and timely message. The remaining chapters of his book delve into a new strategic approach that gives you a step by step analysis of how to approach strategy in a world where nothing is certain any longer.

The book is also filled with ongoing cases that are compared against his theories so we get a very good look at how companies could have changed their strategic approach as well as seeing mistakes they made along the way. Finally, Dudik draws upon a wonderful knowledge of history to provide strategic insights as well.

If you are looking for a fresh read, lively prose and inventive thinking, I wholeheartedly recommend Strategic Renaissance.

Chapter Outline

Chapter One - What Strategy Has Learned From Astrology and What it Needs to Learn From Science

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

Chapter Three - Strategic Anatomy: Strategy's Hammer and Pivot

Chapter Four - The End of an Era: The Twilight of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Chapter Five - Making Strategy Dynamic: The Dawn of Opportunity Creation and Exploitation

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

Chapter Seven - Strategic Breakthrough and Exploitation: Making the Right Choices and Choosing the Right Tools

Chapter Eight - Deploying Resources: Tools for Exploration

Chapter Nine - Born Allies and Sworn Enemies: Corporate Strategy Meets Corporate Culture

Chapter Ten - Top Management Teamwork: Tools for Harmonizing Strategy and Culture

Chapter Eleven - 81 Do's and Don't's on the Road to a Great Corporate Strategy

Strategic Renaissance, by Evan M. Dudik, provides a refreshing recognition that practically timeless traits characterize effective strategy. Mr. Dudik weaves his philosophical, historical, business and strategic acumen into a practical work that should be of interest to a broad audience, not just corporate strategists. Rather than providing us with the typical simple formula peppered with retrospective examples of success, Strategic Renaissance examines the best strategic characteristics of war, business, science and other fields of human endeavor during the past one thousand years.

For instance, try to imagine drawing parallels between events as divergent as the impact of the internet on business practices, ancient Greek military campaigns and behavioral psychology to evaluate that next bold corporate move. No CEO will dispute the traditional strategic factors of geography, transportation, cost, price, culture and people will remain increasingly dynamic as a result of technology. Therefore, no strategy, regardless of its current success, can sustain itself indefinitely. Dudik seeks to help the reader define a framework for identifying the ongoing process of creating, exploiting, destroying and re-creating successful business strategies.

Strategic Renaissance is exceptionally readable and Mr. Dudik's frequent quips and humorous real life anecdotes help to maintain the quick pace. Nonetheless, not every professed strategist is going to be comforted by the thoughtful challenges presented here. But for those who are willing to put aside, at least for the moment, their current notions regarding the development, maintenance and evaluation of business strategy, I promise a genuinely new view of the field. Strategic Renaissance allows, actually requires, its readers to consider strategic adaptation not as failure but as necessary for continued survival and success.

Not many strategy books begin with a burning at the stake, but for this one, the image fits. Four hundred years ago, Giordano Bruno was one of a long string of brave zealots who clung to his belief in the scientific observation at the cost of his life. Vested interests could not abide the notion that unconventional thoughts could be rigorously tested unfettered by the passions of belief.

Now, at the turn of the millennium, science has embraced Mr. Bruno's views, but business strategists continue to burn heretics at the stake. Why? Because many companies adopt strategies as belief systems, so challenging them risks career death. Dudik argues that strategies are ideas, not beliefs. Like other ideas, they can be formulated as hypotheses subject to rigorous tests. Strategies that don't meet the test in due course should be rejected.

Rather than trot out yet another set of consultant-polished beliefs, Dudik presents a series of techniques and approaches borrowed from his interest in military history and experience in consulting. These ideas may or may not work for you, he says, but any that you select should be couched as falsifiable hypotheses that must pass merciless, scientific scrutiny. Only then can you avoid the trap of falling blindly in love with your ideas.

For this fresh perspective alone, this book is worth its quick read. Dudik's application of the military hammer and pivot strategy is insightful, and his 81 do's and dont's of strategy development are innovative and practical. Strategic Renaissance deserves a place on the bookshelf of any executive with the courage to challenge and invigorate his or her organization.

Evan M. Dudik's "Strategic Renaissance" is an engaging product of a richly informed mind at work. The promise in the subtitle that it will use "insights from history and science" proves too modest, for it does not fully encompass the resources behind the insights--notably the writer's knowledge of past and current corporate strategies and of the luminaries of Western thought from Aristotle to Sir Karl Popper. It is Popper's idea of "falsifiability that Dudik adopts as a guide to sound thought. It is the acid test of inductively developed theories, a safeguard against being persuaded merely by the accumulation of data. The book offers much to readers besides those concerned with corporate strategies. It is a lucid, persuasive treaise on how to think and is in itself an impressive example of the processes it recommends. As an educator I was pleased to see it as scholarship functioning outside the ivory tower, as an affirmation of the practical value of the liberal curriculum.

Book Review-Strategic Renaissance

Strategic Renaissance is the business strategy equivalent of a hot date-exciting, challenging to keep up with and something you want to snap up before your competition. Exciting, because it devastates the past 25 years of conventional thinking about strategy as pseudo-science. Challenging, because it dares to replace that thinking with firmly grounded ideas from history, science and the law that seem obvious-once you look back on them. And it's something you don't want your competitors to read before you because it shows the true meaning of strategic judo.

One of the things I liked best about Strategic Renaissance is that Dudik doesn't stop with insightful analogies from history and science. Instead he goes on to make them practical-how to make strategy dispassionate and scientific, not just what's wrong with strategic business thinking now; how to select and deploy business SWAT teams and rapid deployment forces, not just why you need them; how to squeeze the most out of strategic planners and consultants, not just why they are misused and abused; exactly how to probe for strategic opportunities, not just exhortation to be "opportunistic;" how to cut the ground under your competitor's strategic "Pivot," not just how to identify it. The 81 Do's and Don'ts should be ripped out and pasted to every top manager's office wall.

This book isn't perfect. I wish some of the worksheets had been larger and the section on team building for strategic victory had been a little longer. Somebody's going to make money creating a large format "Strategic Renaissance Workbook." And the book takes intellectual guts to read, although I found the prose polished and exciting. Watch out Michael Porter, watch out Michael Hammer. If you've got what it takes to handle Strategic Renaissance's high octane ideas, this is the business book of the decade.

On page 17, the author writes, "If you've read this far, you are already ahead of most corporate strategic thinkers in companies today."

That is not as immoderate a comment as you might suppose. Those first 17 pages contain fundamental thinking about scientific method and business strategy.

Much later in the book, the author offers a critique of corporate culture. His many anecdotes confirm what I have been experiencing for years: virtually every project I've been associated has been plagued with some portion of irrationality. I hear the same from my friends. We regularly trade "war stories" over lunch about difficulties we encounter with our bosses and customers. In some cases, these problems are quite serious. They go deeper than just waste and folly. They affect individuals' careers, health, and families.

The author offers plausible explanations for how and why such upsetting situations occur.

For me this a big stress reliever. Dealing with circumstances and behavior that I don't understand is difficult and exhausting.

So the book has already helped me. I don't know whether I'll be able to implement any of the author's strategic suggestions or whether they'll help my business become more profitable. I hope they will, but only time will tell.

In any case, he has taught me some useful ways to think about things.

Also, the book deserves praise for its accurate references to the history of science and philosophy.

In his book Strategic Renaissance, author Evan Dudik states: "there can't be a cookbook strategy". He says that a business strategy should be a hypothesis and then continually test the main strategic hypothesis your company is based upon. That means rather than looking for reason that your plan will work, you look for reasons it might not. Above all, find ways to measure outcomes. Hypothesis testing involves constructing a series of if then statements and measuring what happens, learning by doing. Dudik states that opportunity creation and exploration goes through the following 4 cycles: Opportunity creation and discovery Opportunity recognition, breakthrough and exploration Opportunity consolidation Opportunity dismantling and recycling

Emergent strategy should be developed from the bottom up. Dudik states that research bears this out. Over 70 percent of successful new product ideas originate with market needs and 50 percent involve direct input from customers. In emergent strategy, tactics should dictate strategy. Dudik states that for emergent strategy companies should try a lot of ideas and "test the heck out of them." Like others, Dudik advocates a two-pronged approach to strategy. He call the hammer your competitive advantage or deliberate strategy and the pivot, where you set up small experiments and then try to refute your null hypothesis as emergent strategy development.