Stall Points

Stall Points PDF Author: Matthew S. Olson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030014542X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
In this probing study of the growth experience of Fortune 100-sized firms across the past fifty years, authors Olson and van Bever find that great companies stop growing not because of market saturation, government regulation, or other external constraints but rather because of a finite set of common strategy mistakes that appear time after time, across industries, across geography, and across the economic cycle."--Jacket.

Stall Points

Stall Points PDF Author: Matthew S. Olson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030014542X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
In this probing study of the growth experience of Fortune 100-sized firms across the past fifty years, authors Olson and van Bever find that great companies stop growing not because of market saturation, government regulation, or other external constraints but rather because of a finite set of common strategy mistakes that appear time after time, across industries, across geography, and across the economic cycle."--Jacket.

When Growth Stalls

When Growth Stalls PDF Author: Steve McKee
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470395702
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
One of the toughest lessons every business leader learns is how hard it is to generate sustained growth. Stalled growth is the rule, not the exception--even for the best-managed companies. That's especially true in unpredictable economic environments such as the one we're experiencing today. McKee has a unique understanding of what happens when growth stalls. His firm commissioned a study of 700 companies that had at one time been among the nation's fastest-growing businesses. Developed in concert with Decision Analyst, a leading national research and consulting firm, the study probed areas as diverse as corporate structure, competition, branding, finance, and strategy. The target respondent profile were CEOs, owners, principals, presidents, managing directors or chairmen of the board. In-depth follow-up interviews yielded fascinating stories and personal comments from executives who had been living on the front lines of real-life growth crises. McKee presents compelling knowledge about how and why companies lose their way, and offers practical advice about how they can rekindle growth. When Growth Stalls demonstrates that sluggish growth is generally produced not by mismanagement or strategic blundering but by natural market forces and management dynamics that are often unrecognized--and widespread. The book presents seven characteristics that commonly correlate with stalled growth and what to do about them. Some are external forces to which countless companies have fallen victim: economic upheavals, changing industry dynamics, and increased competition. What McKee points out, however, is how often they catch companies off-guard. More surprising are four subtle and highly destructive internal factors that conspire to keep companies down: lack of consensus among the management team, loss of nerve, loss of focus, and marketing inconsistency. McKee makes the case that, regardless of what's going on outside of an enterprise, it's what's inside that counts.

STALL POINTS : Most Companies Stop Growing--Yours Doesn't Have To

STALL POINTS : Most Companies Stop Growing--Yours Doesn't Have To PDF Author: Matthew S Olson & Derek van Bever
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788189632281
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Very few large companies manage to avoid stalls in revenue growth. These stalls are not attributable to the natural business cycle. Rather, careful analysis reveals that the vast majority of such stalls are the direct result of strategic choices made by corporate leaders. In short, stoppages in growth are almost always avoidable. This extensively researched book analyzes the growth experiences of more than six hundred Fortune 100 companies over the past fifty years to identify why growth stalls and to discover how to rectify a stall in progress or, even better, avoid one. Board members and executives in companies of all sizes will find this book a practical and essential resource. Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever investigate the incidence and consequences of growth stalls in major corporations, then probe the root causes. Examining hundreds of stall points, the authors conclude that the greatest threat to a company’s growth is posed by obsolete strategic assumptions that undermine market position, and by breakdowns in innovation and talent management. The study includes a selection of practices for articulating and monitoring strategic assumptions and concludes with a self-test built around fifty “Red Flag†warning signs of an impending growth stall.

The Founder's Mentality

The Founder's Mentality PDF Author: Chris Zook
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN: 1633691179
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
A Washington Post Bestseller Three Principles for Managing—and Avoiding—the Problems of Growth Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company’s Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external—increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability, proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few. What’s more, companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow. Even for healthy companies, these crises, if not managed properly, stifle the ability to grow further—and can actively lead to decline. The key insight from Zook and Allen’s research is that managing these choke points requires a “founder’s mentality”—behaviors typically embodied by a bold, ambitious founder—to restore speed, focus, and connection to customers: • An insurgent’s clear mission and purpose • An unambiguous owner mindset • A relentless obsession with the front line Based on the authors’ decade-long study of companies in more than forty countries, The Founder’s Mentality demonstrates the strong relationship between these three traits in companies of all kinds—not just start-ups—and their ability to sustain performance. Through rich analysis and inspiring examples, this book shows how any leader—not only a founder—can instill and leverage a founder’s mentality throughout their organization and find lasting, profitable growth.

Hacking Growth

Hacking Growth PDF Author: Sean Ellis
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 045149721X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
The definitive playbook by the pioneers of Growth Hacking, one of the hottest business methodologies in Silicon Valley and beyond. It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Airbnb was the best-kept secret of travel hackers and couch surfers, Pinterest was a niche web site frequented only by bakers and crafters, LinkedIn was an exclusive network for C-suite executives and top-level recruiters, Facebook was MySpace’s sorry step-brother, and Uber was a scrappy upstart that didn’t stand a chance against the Goliath that was New York City Yellow Cabs. So how did these companies grow from these humble beginnings into the powerhouses they are today? Contrary to popular belief, they didn’t explode to massive worldwide popularity simply by building a great product then crossing their fingers and hoping it would catch on. There was a studied, carefully implemented methodology behind these companies’ extraordinary rise. That methodology is called Growth Hacking, and it’s practitioners include not just today’s hottest start-ups, but also companies like IBM, Walmart, and Microsoft as well as the millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, managers and executives who make up the community of Growth Hackers. Think of the Growth Hacking methodology as doing for market-share growth what Lean Start-Up did for product development, and Scrum did for productivity. It involves cross-functional teams and rapid-tempo testing and iteration that focuses customers: attaining them, retaining them, engaging them, and motivating them to come back and buy more. An accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share, this book walks readers through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must read for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manger looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.

Why Startups Fail

Why Startups Fail PDF Author: Tom Eisenmann
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0593137027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

The Innovator's Solution

The Innovator's Solution PDF Author: Clayton
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1422196585
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen’s work continues to underpin today’s most innovative leaders and organizations. A seminal work on disruption—for everyone confronting the growth paradox. For readers of the bestselling The Innovator’s Dilemma—and beyond—this definitive work will help anyone trying to transform their business right now. In The Innovator’s Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor expand on the idea of disruption, explaining how companies can and should become disruptors themselves. This classic work shows just how timely and relevant these ideas continue to be in today’s hyper-accelerated business environment. Christensen and Raynor give advice on the business decisions crucial to achieving truly disruptive growth and propose guidelines for developing your own disruptive growth engine. The authors identify the forces that cause managers to make bad decisions as they package and shape new ideas—and offer new frameworks to help create the right conditions, at the right time, for a disruption to succeed. This is a must-read for all senior managers and business leaders responsible for innovation and growth, as well as members of their teams. Based on in-depth research and theories tested in hundreds of companies across many industries, The Innovator’s Solution is a necessary addition to any innovation library—and an essential read for entrepreneurs and business builders worldwide.

Profit Or Growth?

Profit Or Growth? PDF Author: Bala Chakravarthy
Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0132339528
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The author provides tools and a framework for successfully sustaining profitable growth. Focusing on the execution of renewal strategies, he examines the characteristics of the entrepreneur-manager, explains how to locate a suitable organizational home for the project, and presents ways to create support for its implementation.

Jumping the S-curve

Jumping the S-curve PDF Author: Paul Nunes
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1422175588
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Becoming worthy of the efforts and commitment of serious talent. --

What Happens Now?

What Happens Now? PDF Author: John Hillen
Publisher: Jaico Publishing House
ISBN: 9388423291
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Reinvent Yourself as a Leader Before Your Business Outruns You Whether you are a senior leader or aspire to be one, at some point you’ll face a paradoxical risk. As you pile up successes, your job will get bigger than you, and you may become disoriented by a world of unfamiliar challenges. What Happens Now? will help you learn how to conquer the new challenges of sophistication – rather than just navigating the greater complexity – by doing things you’ve never done before. You will succeed by achieving these goals: • Broadcasting a vision with clarity and purpose • Aligning a high-performing team • Communicating and leading change • Focusing your time and energy in the right places • Investing in coaching and creating other leaders As experienced troubleshooters for hundreds of executives and organizations, John Hillen and Mark Nevins will show you how to foresee the stalls that threaten every leader – and overcome them. JOHN HILLEN, D.Phil., is a leadership and strategy professor in the School of Business at George Mason University, a consultant, and a director for many companies. MARK D. NEVINS, PhD, is an advisor to top executives, teams, and organizations. He has consulted from the C-suite down at Fortune 500 corporations, high-growth startups and private equity portfolio companies, and elite professional and financial services firms. “A practical and enriching guide for leaders.” WALTER ISAACSON International bestselling author “Will help leaders at all levels grow and develop.” MARSHALL GOLDSMITH International Bestselling Author