HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy
In Summary Vijay Ramachandran
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy
By
Published by Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press.
Rs 550
ll men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
—Sun Tzu
IN SUMMARY: Anthologies can be a mixed bag. My experience with them always reminds me of the Curate’s Egg—excellent, but only in parts. So, you can appreciate my concern when I picked up HBR’s 10 Must Reads On Strategy. Yet a few articles into the compilation made it clear that this was no ordinary tome.
What’s also remarkable is that for a compilation of articles on strategy that appeared in the Harvard Business Review from 1996 till 2008, it still retains its freshness. In fact, given the economic climate, its insights are especially relevant, since the authors essentially go over what qualifies as strategy (and what doesn’t), how to formulate it and, finally, implement it effectively.
The 10 articles are not encyclopedic in their coverage of business strategy. Not by a long shot. Personally, I don’t think it’s within the scope of any single book or person.
But what these articles will help you with is competitive differentiation; with figuring out what your organization should and shouldn’t do; with creating a vision when the future remains fuzzy; with zeroing in on priorities; with speeding up decision making; with being able to marry strategy and tactics and goals and move towards successful execution.
I don’t recall any other book that puts this across better, or provides more advice, or even explains it as well. Porter, Christensen, Kim, Collins, Rogers, Mankins are not only among the world’s foremost experts on strategy, but they also convey their thoughts supremely (well, I’ll admit that the article on Balanced Scorecard wasn’t the easiest of reads, but it still stayed within the realm of the exceptional as did the others).
Truth be told, I would have gone for it just to read the first two seminal articles by Michael Porter (See how his theory of competiitve advantage applies to Indian CIOs. Turn to page 34) and the one on Blue Ocean Strategy. If you are serious about having a strategic vision, do pick up a copy. Better still order up a bunch and present them to your colleagues.
And, if you don’t want to take my word for it, read on for why one of your peers thinks it’s worth a read.
CIO REVIEWS Expand all | Collapse all
S. SRINIVASAN, CIO, Sundaram Fasteners
ne low-cost airline flourishes while another fails in the same environment. A modest trucking company takes on truck titans in Detroit and Europe, thus creates a formidable reputation. A single organization represents the leap in quality for an entire country. How does all this happen? These issues are compellingly taken up in this compilation of Harvard Business Review articles, an illuminating guide on how brands or companies succeed. In the first half, arguments are advanced by gurus such as Michael Porter to look beyond current business for long term survival. In the latter half, Robert Kaplan and others articulate the art of effective execution. If over-used jargon like five competitive forces, core ideologies, blue oceans and balanced scorecards have become blind spots for you, the examples in the book will help make sense of why we should care to understand and implement them. Therein we find the true meaning of muddied terms like strategy, decentralization and decision making, all of which have been made frustratingly generic through hype and overuse. Backed by actual corporate cases and persuasive logic, the book leaves a deep impact and is a comprehensive and valuable guide for all business strategists. Definitely worth a read.
