Perspectives on Strategy

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 is an indispensable source of fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here is a sampling of what's inside:

• "[Business] competition is a battle royal in which there are many contenders, each of whom must be dealt with individually. Victory, if achieved, is more often won in the mind of a competitor than in the economic arena."
• "The majority of products in most companies are cash traps. . . . [They] are not only worthless, but a perpetual drain on corporate resources."
• "Use more debt than your competition or get out of the business."
• "Displacement of high-cost competitors by lower prices benefits the customer."
• "As a strategic weapon, time is the equivalent of money, productivity, quality, even innovation."
• "When brands become business systems, brand management becomes far too important to leave to the marketing department."
• "The winning organization of the future will look more like a collection of jazz ensembles than a symphony orchestra."
• "Most of our organizations today derive from a model whose original purpose was to control creativity."
• "Dumping should be encouraged. It is a gift from the nation that provides the products."
• "Taxes should be levied when, and only when, individuals disinvest in order to consume. Capital still at work should not be taxed at all."

The Boston Consulting Group is an innovator in business strategy worldwide. In fact, BCG and its founder, Bruce D. Henderson, may be best known internationally as the creators and architects of the discipline of business strategy. Innovative business concepts originating at the firm include "cash cow," "experience curve," "segment-of-one(r) marketing," "time-based competition," and "capabilities-based competition." Now, for the first time, BCG's most influential writings are gathered in a comprehen-sive collection, offering serious-minded readers access to BCG's thinking on the theory, development, and practice of business strategy.

One way BCG shares its insights on strategy is through a series of publications known as Perspectives. Perspectives offer sharply focused views and recommendations on strategic business topics. Distributed to executives worldwide, Perspectives are typically no more than 1,200 words in length.

This book brings together many of the most influential Perspectives, as well as several acclaimed articles published in the Harvard Business Review. Both timely and timeless, the seventy-five pieces included here are among the most innovative, controversial, and stimulating to have appeared over the past three decades.

An anthology of the most provocative thinking from one of the world's most esteemed management consulting firms, Perspectives on Strategy is essential reading for senior managers, executives, entrepreneurs, and students of strategy and business.

• Part One: The Nature of Business Strategy.
• Strategic and Natural Competition, Bruce D. Henderson, 1980.
• Part Two: The Development of Business Strategy.
• Foundations.
• The Experience Curve Reviewed: History, Bruce D. Henderson, 1973.
• The Experience Curve Reviewed: Why Does It Work?, Bruce D. Henderson, 1974.
• The Experience Curve Reviewed: Price Stability, Bruce D. Henderson, 1974.
• The Pricing Paradox, Bruce D. Henderson, 1970.
• The Market-Share Paradox, Bruce D. Henderson, 1970.
• More Debt or None?, Bruce D. Henderson, 1972.
• The Rule of Three and Four, Bruce D. Henderson, 1976.
• The Product Portfolio, Bruce D. Henderson, 1970.
• The Real Objectives, Bruce D. Henderson, 1976.
• Milestones.
• Life Cycle of the Industry Leader, Bruce D. Henderson, 1972.
• The Evils of Average Costing, Richard K. Lochridge, 1975.
• Specialization or the Full Product Line, Michael C. Goold, 1979.
• Stalemate: The Problem, John S. Clarkeson, 1984.
• Strategy in the 1980s, Richard K. Lochridge, 1981
• Revolution on the Factory Floor, Thomas M. Hout and George Stalk Jr., 1982.
• Time — The Next Source of Competitive Advantage, George Stalk Jr., 1988.
• Competing on Capabilities: The New Rules of Corporate Strategy, George Stalk Jr., Philip B. Evans, and Lawrence E. Shulman, 1992.
• Reengineering Bumps into Strategy, Jonathan L. Isaacs, 1994
• Strategy and the New Economics of Information, Philip B. Evans and Thomas S. Wurster, 1997.
• Part Three: The Practice of Business Strategy.
• The Customer: Segmentation and Value Creation.
• Segmentation and Strategy, Seymour Tilles, 1974.
• Strategic Sectors, Bruce D. Henderson, 1975.
• Specialization, Richard K. Lochridge, 1981.
• Specialization: Cost Reduction or Price Realization, Anthony J. Habgood, 1981.
• Segment-of-One^® Marketing, Richard Winger and David Edelman, 1989.
• Discovering Your Customer, Michael J. Silverstein and Philip Siegel, 1991.
• The New Vertical Integration, John R. Frantz and Thomas M. Hout, 1993
• Total Brand Management, David C. Edelman and Michael J. Silverstein, 1993.
• From the Insight Out, Michael J. Silverstein, 1995.
• Capitalizing on Anomalies, Lawrence E. Shulman, 1997.
• Breaking Compromises, George Stalk Jr., David K. Pecaut, and Benjamin Burnett, 1997. 
• Time-based Competition
• The Time Paradigm, George Stalk, Jr., 1988
• Make Decisions Like a Fighter Pilot, Mark F. Blaxill and Thomas M. Hout, 1987
• Time and Quality, Gary Reiner and Matthew Ericksen, 1990
• A New Product Every Week? Lessons from Magazine Publishing, Gary Reiner and Shikhar Ghosh, 1988.
• Rules of Response, George Stalk, Jr., 1987
• Time-Based Results, Thomas M. Hoult and George Stalk, Jr., 1993
• Performance Measurement.
• Profit Center Ethics, Bruce D. Henderson, 1971.
• The Story of Joe (A Fable), Bruce D. Henderson, 1977.
• Controlling for Growth in a Multidivision Business, Patrick Conley, 1968.
• Making Performance Measurements Perform, Robert Malchione, 1991.
• Economic Value Added, Eric E. Olsen, 1996.
• Resource Allocation.
• Cash Traps, Bruce D. Henderson, 1972.
• The Star of the Portfolio, Bruce D. Henderson, 1976.
• Anatomy of the Cash Cow, Bruce D. Henderson, 1976.
• The Corporate Portfolio, Bruce D. Henderson, 1977.
• Renaissance of the Portfolio, Anthony W. Miles, 1986.
• Premium Conglomerates, Dieter Heuskel, 1996.
• Organizational Design.
• Profit Centers and Decentralized Management, Bruce D. Henderson, 1968.
• Unleash Intuition, Richard K. Lochridge, 1984.
• Network Organizations, Todd L. Hixon, 1989.
• The Myth of the Horizontal Organization, Philippe J. Amouyal and Jill E. Black, 1994.
• The Activist Center, Dennis N. Rheault and Simon P. Trussler, 1995.
• Organizing the Global Company, Xavier Mosquet and Mark F. Blaxill, 1996
• Leadership and Change.
• Why Change Is So Difficult, Bruce D. Henderson, 1968.
• Leadership, Bruce D. Henderson, 1968.
• How to Recognize the Need for Change, Carl W. Stern, 1983.
• Sustained Success, Alan J. Zakon and Richard K. Lochridge, 1984.
• Strategy and Learning, Seymour Tilles, 1985.
• Let Middle Managers Manage, Jeanie Daniel Duck, 1991.
• Jazz versus Symphony, John S. Clarkeson, 1990.
• Part Four: Business Thinking.
• Business Thinking, Bruce D. Henderson, 1977.
• Brinkmanship in Business, Bruce D. Henderson, 1967.
• Business Chess, Rudyard L. Istvan, 1984.
• What Is "Japanese" About the Kaisha?, James C. Abegglen and George Stalk Jr., 1985
• Probing, Jonathan L. Isaacs, 1985.
• Creative Analysis, Anthony W. Miles, 1987.
• The Seduction of Reductionist Thinking, Jeanie Daniel Duck, 1992.
• Part Five: Social Commentary.
• Failure to Compete, Bruce D. Henderson, 1973.
• To Create an Energy Shortage, Bruce D. Henderson, 1973.
• Inflation and Investment Return, Bruce D. Henderson, 1974.
• Conflicting Tax Objectives, Bruce D. Henderson, 1975.
• Dumping, Bruce D. Henderson, 1978.
• Adversaries or Partners?, Bruce D. Henderson, 1983.
• The Promise of Disease Management, Joshua Gray and Peter Lawyer, 1995.

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