Strategy and the Business Landscape

by Pankaj E Ghemawat

FOURTH An introductory strategy textbook that adopts a value-focused, firm-centered perspective on strategy. The book is rigorous in its research base, pragmatic in its focus, and concise. This fourth edition includes chapters on competitive dynamics (with Bruno Cassiman), corporate strategy (with Jan Rivkin), and more. It combines academic thinking with examples and insights drawn from consulting.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

194 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Julian Dunn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely dry. It's a textbook, and textbooks are written by academics, so the whole thing is like an academic paper. However, Ghemawat and his co-authors generally don't use high-falutin' language; the content is digestible but it requires a high level of concentration and attention.

Some chapters are more practical than others. The one on competition is pretty good and has some useful tactics; others are less so, like "sustainable competitive advantage", where the chapter opens with some data about how essentially, there is no forecasting or establishing sustainable advantage, yet it goes on to explain in great deal some complicated academic theories about what you might do (???) I skipped the rest of that chapter.

Obviously, I wouldn't recommend reading this voluntarily. If you just want the information (which by the way is solid), there are many other publications out there that present the material in a more accessible way.

[MrsEnginerd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good class companion to MBA classes. Short, sweet and to point with relevant examples. Not an easy read. Use with business dictionaries and other study aids.