Description
The task of continuously renewing a company is the greatest challenge confronting any chief executive. To enable managers to project renewal strategies likely to win in the future, Jeffrey Williams has constructed a dynamic road map of outcomes in what he calls “economic time,” based on a ten-year study of growth, decline, and renewal patterns of hundreds of companies in forty-five industries. In this superbly readable book, Williams’s revolutionary, award-winning concept of slow-, standard-, and fast-cycle economic time provides a unifying business language that the multicycle manager can use to compare the renewal opportunities of widely diverse products, companies, and markets. Using examples and studies from companies such as Starbucks, McDonald’s, UPS, Compaq, Sony, Merck, Disney, Toyota, IKEA, Microsoft, Sony, Intel, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Chrysler, and Hewlett-Packard, Williams explains that the key idea in economic time is being able to manage products and organizations according to the speed and means by which economic value arises, decays, and is renewed. The drivers of economic time are isolating mechanisms — a firm’s unique capabilities that lie at the heart of its competitive advantage — and that, in Williams’s framework, “delay” product obsolescence. Building on his intuitively appealing model, Williams describes how his three laws of renewal — convergence, alignment, and renewal — provide guidelines by which managers can gain command over strategy in complex, dynamic competitive situations. Renewable Advantage is not only essential reading but also will become a standard reference for senior and division managers, business scientists and strategists, and general managers in all industries. CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments 1. THE ADVENT OF ECONOMIC TIME What Is Economic Time? How Do I Know Where I Am in Economic Time? The Laws of Renewal Multispeed Competition 2. THE SCALE ORCHESTRATORS Beyond Scale to Scale Orchestration Fine Tuning Your Orchestra Differentiated Cost Leadership 3. THE CHILDREN EATERS The Gale of Creative Destruction Spawning and Cannibalizing How Fast-Cycle Organizations Survive 4. THE NEW ARTISANS Mighty Fortresses The Slow-Cycle Growth Puzzle Staircase Strategies 5. THE THREE LAWS OF RENEWAL Convergence Alignment Renewal 6. ALIGNING STRATEGY WITH INVESTORS Renewable Success Factors High-Energy Markets Options-Rich Managing When Economic Time Stops 7. MULTICYCLE MANAGEMENT Multicycle Organizations Multicycle Core Competencies 8. MANAGING CYCLE SHIFTS Dynamic Value Chain Analysis Standard to Fast Cycle Slow to Fast Cycle Fast to Standard Cycle 9. INNOVATION: THE ORIGIN OF RENEWAL Innovation Patterns Innovation in Economic Time Personal Renewal — Your Career 10. CREATING YOUR FUTURE What We Know Overcoming Obstacles: Starting the Process Seven Steps to Renewable Leadership POSTSCRIPT NOTES INDEX
