Perspectives on Strategy from the Boston Consulting Group

by George Stalk Jr. and Carl W. Stern

Book Overview

a collection of the best thinking from one of the most innovative management consulting firms in the world. For the past thirty-five years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping the way business is done the world over, and now, Perspectives on Strategy offers a unique opportunity to acquaint readers with a broad selection of the firm's contributions. A compilation of seventy-five of BCG's most influential articles and thought pieces, this book...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471248339
• ISBN13: 9780471248330
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 319 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Repeated punches "between the eyes"

This book offers still another example of articles published years ago (in this instance, 1998) whose key insights remain relevant. It is dedicated to Bruce Doolin Henderson (1915-1992) who founded the Boston Consulting Group and served as its president and CEO for several decades. Henderson also wrote the introductory essay, "Strategic and Natural Competition," and a number of others throughout this anthology. Each of the articles appeared in BCG's "Perspectives" publication, and offers a concise analysis designed to help stimulate senior management thinking on a range of business topics. Henderson once observed that he wanted their impact to resemble "a punch between the eyes." The co-editors of Perspectives on Strategy are Carl Stern and George Stalk who also contribute articles. It remains for each reader to select those articles of greatest interest and value to her or him. Here are excerpts from three I especially enjoyed: "Companies like Wal-Mart, Honda, Canon, The Limited, or Banc One have learned this lesson [i.e. to identify and develop the hard-to-imitate organizational capabilities that distinguish a company from its competitors in the eyes of customers]. Their experience and that of other successful companies suggests four basic principles of capabilities-based competition: "1. The building blocks of corporate strategy are not products and markets but business processes. "2. Competitive success depends on transforming a company's key processes into strategic capabilities that consistently provide superior value to the customer. "3. Companies create these capabilities by making strategic investments in a support infrastructure that links together and transcends traditional SBUs and functions. "4. Because capabilities necessarily cross functions, the champion of a capabilities-based strategy is the CEO." (`Competing on Capabilities: The New Rules of Corporate Strategy,' George Stalk, Jr., Philip B. Evans, and Lawrence E. Shulman, 1992) * * * * * "Don't relay on asking customers what they want. They almost never really know. It's the rare individual who can predict his or her own behavior or understand the inchoate emotions that motivate action. And few customers can forecast the premium they'll be willing to pay for a unique new value proposition. "What they can do is articulate their dissatisfactions. Let these dissatisfactions guide you to the most promising cells of the opportunity cube. What matters most are not so much the specific deficiencies of existing products as the broad customer dissatisfactions - for example, frustrations born of time scarcity, inconvenience, or unfulfilled yearnings for affiliation." (`From the Insight Out,' Michael J. Silverstein, 1995) * * * * * "Corporate strategy is more than the summation of individual business strategies. Corporate strategy must provide for tomorrow's success as well as today's. For this reason the corporate organization is different from

Consult this!

Hello,This is a great collection of short articles from one of the most influential business consulting companies of all times.So, if you can put up with or filter out some of the bizarre and apparently politically motivated comments then what you get is a fascinating history of the development of strategic thought in quite a number of key business areas.Naturally, this is not a "how to" or a "biz strategy for dummies" book, but it does well in explaining some key concepts and of generating a desire to know more, that is, if you don't already know it all.Regards,martyn_jones@iniciativas.com

A wealth of the most influential ideas in strategy, all here

I have found this book a great addition to my business library. One can pick it up and read brief essays on a wide variety of strategy topics. The intellectual history of strategy consulting resides here!

A good historical recap on BCG greatest hits

If you want to know where a lot of the actual strategy jargon came from, this is the place. You will learn the origin and the original meaning of "cash cow", "segment of one", "growth matrix" and many others. It is a collection of articles written by Bruce Henderson and other members of the BCG through the years so it is not really articulated and linked as a normal book but somehow, maybe through professional experience you can establish the link between the different subjects it covers. This book would certainly be the foundation for the reading of many actual business books. I enjoyed it and certainly recomend it.Para cualquiera que hable primordialmente el español creo que debería ser una lectura obligada porque el Boston Consulting Group no ha tenido nunca la proyección internacional de otras grandes consultorías como Andersen o Mc Kinsey y por lo mismo sus ideas no han permeado nuestros ambientes de negocios en la forma en que lo h! ! ubieran hecho si el BCG tuviera más presencia en nuestros países

STRAIGHTFORWARD AND TO THE POINT

Although most of the writings are old, they are still facinating and revealing. Bruce Henderson is clear, concise, and to the point. The book is surprisingly well organized, considering that it is a compilation of articles from different periods and writers. In my opinion, consulting firms such as Mckinsey and BCG have long provided some of the best business writing available to the executive managers as well as B-school students. This book is no exception. Indeed, it makes for a perfect MBA business strategy textbook.