Breakout Strategy: Meeting the Challenge of Double-Digit Growth by Finkelstein, Sydney; Harvey, Charles; Lawton, Thomas;

Short description:

BREAKOUT: A forceful emergence from a restrictive form or position.

STRATEGY: The means by which leaders create and take control of the future.

Google. Starbucks. IKEA. jetBlue. Netflix. Samsung. You know their names because they have been some of the biggest breakout companies in the past decade. Armed with five years of research and field-testing, Breakout Strategy shows you the path to that tipping point-where strategy, execution, and sheer demand meet to form explosive and unstoppable business growth.

“Breakout Strategy is bursting with fresh ideas. It reveals how strategy-well conceived and implemented-is the spearhead for value creation and sustained high growth.”-Paul Bateman, CEO, JPMorgan Asset Management

“Breakout Strategy is a wide-ranging and global perspective on the paths which managers can take to achieve double-digit growth which is strongly rooted in a creative use of recent business history.”-Geoffrey Jones, Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, Harvard Business School

“At a time when many established companies seem trapped in low growth, Finkelstein, Harvey, and Lawton offer managers a practical handbook for breaking out of conventional boundaries.”-Richard Whittington, Professor of Strategic Management, Said Business School, Oxford University

“With over 100 current and relevant examples of young and old, heavy and light organizations, the authors have managed to deliver and reinforce the most important messages for business leaders regarding strategy. Breakout Strategy is a refreshing and energizing read.”-Conor McCarthy, Director and Cofounder, AirAsia

Long description:

Companies that purposefully set out to excel are remarkably few and far between.

The number of those who have a strong, well-thought out strategy for success are even fewer.

Based on five years of research and field-testing, Breakout Strategy gives you a “fast track” strategic vision that can push your company to incredible new rates of growth and expansion. Strategy and leadership experts Sydney Finkelstein, Charles Harvey, and Thomas Lawton show how to craft a strategy that fits your business, whether you're a small start-up or an established national or international company. They also give you the tools to adapt that strategy as you grow and expand. Their system features five key initiatives:

• Create a workable vision by understanding the needs and aspirations of a company
• Face customers with a value proposition that covers all the important bases
• Align what a business does with what the customer truly desires
• Balance the people and process sides of business to deliver on promises
• Liberate the energies of any strategy's toughest critic-those who work within the business

Breakout Strategy puts these initiatives in context by examining how diverse companies achieved breakout growth, including jetBlue, Harley Davidson, and Starbucks. It also sheds light on how a poor strategy can topple a once-successful company off the pedestal of market dominance, such as Krispy Kreme's overly ambitious expansion strategy that stretched the company and the brand too thin.

With the systematic approach in Breakout Strategy, you'll be able to travel the fast track to market triumph, leaving your competitors struggling to catch up.

Companies that purposefully set out to excel are remarkably few and far between.

The number of those who have a strong, well-thought out strategy for success are even fewer.

Based on five years of research and field-testing, Breakout Strategy gives you a “fast track” strategic vision that can push your company to incredible new rates of growth and expansion. Strategy and leadership experts Sydney Finkelstein, Charles Harvey, and Thomas Lawton show how to craft a strategy that fits your business, whether you're a small start-up or an established national or international company. They also give you the tools to adapt that strategy as you grow and expand. Their system features five key initiatives:

• Create a workable vision by understanding the needs and aspirations of a company
• Face customers with a value proposition that covers all the important bases
• Align what a business does with what the customer truly desires
• Balance the people and process sides of business to deliver on promises
• Liberate the energies of any strategy's toughest critic-those who work within the business

Breakout Strategy puts these initiatives in context by examining how diverse companies achieved breakout growth, including jetBlue, Harley Davidson, and Starbucks. It also sheds light on how a poor strategy can topple a once-successful company off the pedestal of market dominance, such as Krispy Kreme's overly ambitious expansion strategy that stretched the company and the brand too thin.

With the systematic approach in Breakout Strategy, you'll be able to travel the fast track to market triumph, leaving your competitors struggling to catch up.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Breakout Strategy
Chapter 2 Getting on the Fast Track
Chapter 3 Staying out in Front
Chapter 4 Breakout Dynamics
Chapter 5 Putting Vision to Work
Chapter 6 Being a Magnet Company
Chapter 7 Delivering the Promise
Chapter 8 Executing Breakout
Chapter 9 Breakout Leadership
Appendix: Cases Researched for Breakout Strategy
Index