Harvard Business Review Classics
Скачать книги из серии Harvard Business Review ClassicsHow to Write a Great Business Plan
Judging by all the hoopla surrounding business plans, you'd think the only things standing between would-be entrepreneurs and spectacular success are glossy five-color charts, bundles of meticulous-looking spreadsheets, and decades of month-by-month financial projections. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop. Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them. In How to Write a Great Business Plan , William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture:The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resourcesThe opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fastThe context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fateRisk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respond Timely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.
Do You Want to Keep Your Customers Forever?
This classic article shows how to make mass customization and efficient and personal marketing work by putting the producer and consumer in a «learning relationship.» Over time, this ongoing relationship allows your company to meet a customer's changing needs over time. Furthermore, as your company develops learning relationships with its customers, it should be able to retain their business virtually forever.
Strategic Intent
In this McKinsey Award-winning article, first published in May 1989, Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad explain that Western companies have wasted too much time and energy replicating the cost and quality advantages their global competitors already experience. Canon and other world-class competitors have taken a different approach to strategy: one of strategic intent. They begin with a goal that exceeds the company's present grasp and existing resources: «Beat Xerox»; «encircle Caterpillar.» Then they rally the organization to close the gap by setting challenges that focus employees' efforts in the near to medium term: «Build a personal copier to sell for $1,000»; «cut product development time by 75%.» Year after year, they emphasize competitive innovation—building a portfolio of competitive advantages; searching markets for «loose bricks» that rivals have left underdefended; changing the terms of competitive engagement to avoid playing by the leader's rules. The result is a global leadership position and an approach to competition that has reduced larger, stronger Western rivals to playing an endless game of catch-up.
A Country Is Not a Company
Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman argues that business leaders need to understand the differences between economic policy on the national and international scale and business strategy on the organizational scale. Economists deal with the closed system of a national economy, whereas executives live in the open-system world of business. Moreover, economists know that an economy must be run on the basis of general principles, but businesspeople are forever in search of the particular brilliant strategy. Krugman's article serves to elucidate the world of economics for businesspeople who are so close to it and yet are continually frustrated by what they see. Since 1922, <i>Harvard Business Review</i> has been a leading source of breakthrough management ideas-many of which still speak to and influence us today. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers readers the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world-and will have a direct impact on you today and for years to come.
What Makes an Effective Executive (Harvard Business Review Classics)
In his sixty-five-year consulting career, Peter F. Drucker, widely regarded as the father of modern management, identified eight practices that can make any executive effective. Leadership is not about charisma or extroversion. It’s about these practices: Effective executives ask, “What needs to be done?” They also ask, “What is right for the enterprise?” They develop action plans. They take responsibility for decisions. They take responsibility for communicating. They focus on opportunities rather than problems. They run productive meetings. And they think and say “we” rather than “I.” Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.