Here are 67 books that Competitive Strategy fans have personally recommended if you like
Competitive Strategy.
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I am the founder and principal of Work & Think, LLC., and help clients make complex decisions that include a realistic understanding of uncertainty. My Spangler Ethical Reasoning Assessment® (SERA®) is used across industries and around the world, enabling individuals to combine critical thinking and values to make complex decisions. I am a frequent keynote speaker, a corporate consultant, a researcher, and an author. My new book is Reasoning for Business. Learn more at my website.
I find this book answers questions many people ask: Why aren’t we always logical? What gets in the way of our making effective decisions?
I first read this book when I started my consulting practice and realized I needed to combine psychology with philosophy in teaching critical thinking in professional settings. People want to understand why we can be unreasonable in the first place. Kahneman’s book helped me improve my own thinking, making me aware of the ways my previous experiences quickly provide interpretations of new experiences.
I find the ability to “hit the pause button” regarding my response to a specific situation and to ask myself, “Is my immediate, intuitive response useful or misleading me?” is one of my most important insights from this book.
The phenomenal international bestseller - 2 million copies sold - that will change the way you make decisions
'A lifetime's worth of wisdom' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Thinking, Fast and Slow' Financial Times
Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast,…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
The world of entrepreneurship has been my driving passion for decades. Why? It is entrepreneurs, despite their many quirks, who make the world a better place. It’s entrepreneurs who create jobs in a world where jobs in many places are in short supply. It’s entrepreneurs who wake up every day with a passion to forge their own path with the freedom to do so. And it’s why I embarked at mid-life on a second career as a business-school professor. It’s why I teach and why I write. The books I suggest here will give you a fighting chance to deal effectively with the challenges you’ll surely find along your entrepreneurial journey.
Jim Collins’ best book is the most pragmatic and most useful business book I’ve ever read. Period. From “getting the right people on the bus” to “the hedgehog concept” and more, the fundamentals entailed in creating a truly great business are all here. What more need I say?
________________________________ Can a good company become a great one? If so, how?
After a five-year research project, Jim Collins concludes that good to great can and does happen. In this book, he uncovers the underlying variables that enable any type of organisation to make the leap from good to great while other organisations remain only good. Rigorously supported by evidence, his findings are surprising - at times even shocking - to the modern mind.
Good to Great achieves a rare distinction: a management book full of vital ideas that reads as well as a fast-paced novel. It is widely regarded…
I am always fascinated by how smart people and big companies are blind to risks and opportunities under their noses. Then one day I had a chance to start training them to avoid bad surprises. Based on my unusual background (combination of police intelligence and advanced economics degree) I created the Academy of Competitive Intelligence. It has become the leading global school for avoiding dumb decisions. It now has 10,000 corporate alumni! I didn’t plan it; I didn’t sit down and had a great business plan. I just spotted an opportunity and I grabbed it. Maybe you should do the same? My book tells you how.
I am an economist by training. I taught economic courses at Rutgers University for two decades but the only economic framework I consider useful for real-world managers is the classical school known as Austrian Economics, of which Murray Rothbard was one of the more eloquent and accessible voices. Mainstream economists busy themselves with complex mathematical models that are in the end utterly useless in explaining the world, or worse, are utterly wrong in predicting the consequences of policies but are provided by “court economists” to support ideologies. Murry Rothbard, in contrast, lays down the principles of economic theory that will guide your investment/competitive strategies based on the most solid and realistic economic reasoning around. The book is not easy to read, but it will change your understanding of the world. It inspired me to get a Ph.D.
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
As a wannabe rockstar studying philosophy and mathematics, never in my wildest nightmare did I imagine I would one day earn a living traveling the world, helping corporate managers become better bosses. But in unexpected ways, all the different strands of my interests and passions have woven together into a work-life well lived, with over two decades of experience and contemplation distilled down into this book I have co-written with my friend and business partner, Bjorn Billhardt, CEO of Abilitie.
There are so many golden calves in the world of management and leadership theory, and this book knocks nine of them down politely but mercilessly.
My favorite chapter: “The Delusion of Rigorous Research,” coming from a business school professor who knows first-hand what he’s talking about. I’m encumbered by philosophical training, and in the business world, I constantly find myself asking, “Yes, but what does that word actually mean?” or “What kind of evidence could support that claim, and is that evidence you could actually collect?”
More and more content about how to succeed in business and management gets produced by humans, and increasingly by AI. In that context, I’m grateful for books like this one that focus more on “how” than on “what” to think.
Why do some companies prosper while others fail? Despite great amounts of research, many of the studies that claim to pin down the secret of success are based in pseudoscience. The Halo Effect is the outcome of that pseudoscience, a myth that Philip Rosenzweig masterfully debunks in THE HALO EFFECT. The Halo Effect describes the tendency of experts to point to the high financial performance of a successful company and then spread its golden glow to all of the company's attributes - clear strategy, strong values, and brilliant leadership. But in fact, as Rosenzweig clearly illustrates, the experts are not…
When we speak in real life, much of what we say out loud doesn't have any real meaning. But when authors write, each word a character says must convey meaning to drive the scene forward. The words must exhibit some form of information—emotion, advancement of an idea, or even be the action itself—otherwise, they're just wasted words on the page. The true challenge of writing dialogue is to convey as much as possible with as few words as possible. I love a book in which I'm yearning for specific characters to return just so I can hear the carefully crafted, intelligent, and tight words they employ when speaking, especially when two characters are verbally dueling.
This book is a magnum opus of ideology wrapped in an industrial and political thriller.
At its core, it is about a society collapsing when the people who create its wealth, inventions, and infrastructure begin to withdraw their talent when they come to realize their contributions are not valued. When well-drawn characters who are captains of industry speak, they express confident idealisms that are meant to keep the engine of the world running.
Meanwhile, others are constantly asking, "Who is John Galt?" as a form of hopeless expression. Anyone who uses the phrase and tries to explain what it means comes up with their own theory of its significance and who John Galt might be, but in reality, no one knows the source of the question or who he is. Yet, they continue to ask as if it is a meaningless question.
Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand's greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatizes her unique philosophy through an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life-from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy...to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction...to the philosopher who becomes a pirate...to the woman who…
I’ve been working in value-based pricing for over 20 years and I’ve seen firsthand how it can transform a company’s profits when done right and executed properly through sales. While the specific strategies and tactics vary across industries, company size, and product offerings, many of the foundations and logic behind those strategies can be learned, and must be understood in order to grow a company’s revenue and profit growth in today’s markets. I’d love to connect about any of these topics – feel free to reach out on LinkedIn!
While pricing has evolved in many ways, the tenets of this book will be referenced in nearly every modern-day pricing strategy.
It’s important to understand these foundations and their logic as you build out your own strategy. The book walks through the effects of price, how it reflects on your brand, and the art of price setting and differential value as important parts of the broader picture of pricing.
Practical in focus and lively in style, this book provides a comprehensive, managerially-focused, integrated, step-by-step guide to pricing analysis and strategy development. Numerous walk-through examples show how companies successfully or unsuccessfully implement pricing strategies. Strategic Pricing; Costs; Financial analysis; Customers; Competition; Price-center strategy; Life Cycle Pricing; Managing Value Perceptions; Segmented Pricing; Pricing in and through Distribution Channels; Competitive Advantages; Customer Research for Pricing; The Law and Ethics. For Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Managers of Pricing, Managers of Strategic Planning.
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
I’ve been working in value-based pricing for over 20 years and I’ve seen firsthand how it can transform a company’s profits when done right and executed properly through sales. While the specific strategies and tactics vary across industries, company size, and product offerings, many of the foundations and logic behind those strategies can be learned, and must be understood in order to grow a company’s revenue and profit growth in today’s markets. I’d love to connect about any of these topics – feel free to reach out on LinkedIn!
This book takes a deeper look into the psychology of choices and pricing.
It helps provide more context and understanding around some familiar tactics and what drives buyer’s decisions. While price setting can be a technical activity, leaders need to understand the softer/behavioral skills to sell that price both internally and externally. Both components are important in order to get your pricing right.
Winner, 2022 Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award, American Marketing Association
How do leaders, managers, and proprietors go about the essential task of setting prices? What biases enter into this process, and why? How can a business debias its price setting to become more productive, strategic, and profitable?
Combining perceptive insights from behavioral economics with leading-edge ideas on price management, this book offers a new approach to pricing. Gerald Smith demonstrates why understanding, reframing, and refining everyday pricing processes-a firm's or manager's pricing orientation-results in a better long-term pricing strategy. He explores how pricing actually happens in practice and shows…
I’ve been working in value-based pricing for over 20 years and I’ve seen firsthand how it can transform a company’s profits when done right and executed properly through sales. While the specific strategies and tactics vary across industries, company size, and product offerings, many of the foundations and logic behind those strategies can be learned, and must be understood in order to grow a company’s revenue and profit growth in today’s markets. I’d love to connect about any of these topics – feel free to reach out on LinkedIn!
This is the logical next step in value-based building blocks.
Learning simple negotiation approaches is essential for go-to-market capability building so teams can defend their prices and get paid for the value they deliver. In order for us to sell the price we came up with, we need to understand the various types of people we’re selling to.
The book discusses how to frame value and price appropriately in order to get the most out of realized price, training customers to realize price over time and negotiating more effectively in both the short- and long-term scenarios of customer relationships.
Sales professionals now confront the most serious threat to their success. Regardless of their size, industry, country, customer type, nature of the relationship or amount of value they provide, sales professionals are finding that purchasing decisions are increasingly being limited by procurement. The modern procurement function is purchasing on steroids. Where traditional purchasing managers negotiated, procurement officials attempt to dictate. Procurement deploys a variety of tactics designed to do one thing: gain unprecedented discounts and concessions out of even the most sophisticated sales professionals. This book is a strategy guide for salespeople to help them level the procurement playing field…
I have taught marketing strategy to MBAs and Executives at Business Schools and companies around the world, and have consulted for major companies in financial services, consumer packaged goods, software, and others for over three decades. Some of my Harvard Business Review articles are among the review’s bestsellers, and my book on marketing strategy, TILT: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers, received the best business book award in 2014. I run a marketing strategy consultancy at Brand Strategy Group with clients on three continents.
This book described the economics of the internet age as the web was taking off. It remains a classic in that it not only predicted many of the transformations that were to play out on the web, including social media, and it continues to be useful as a template for predicting the coming transformations that will be wrought by Web3 and Blockchain.
Richness or reach? The trade-off used to be simple but absolute: your business strategy either could focus on 'rich' information - customized products and services tailored to a niche audience - or could reach out to a larger market, but with watered-down information that sacrificed richness in favor of a broad, general appeal. Much of business strategy as we know it today rests on this fundamental trade-off. Now, say Evans and Wurster, the new economics of information is eliminating the trade-off between richness and reach, blowing apart the foundations of traditional business strategy. "Blown to Bits" reveals how the spread…
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
Even before I became a philosopher I was wondering about everything—life the universe and whatever else Douglas Adams thought was important when he wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. As a philosopher, I’ve been able to spend my life scratching the itch of these questions. When I finally figured them out I wrote The Atheist’s Guide to Reality as an introduction to what science tells us besides that there is no god. In How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories I apply much of that to getting to the bottom of why it’s so hard for us, me included, to really absorb the nature of reality.
Frank explains why Darwin is a better guide than Adam Smith’sWealth of Nations to the problems the economy raises for almost everyone. The most important market and the only market where almost everyone is a seller instead of a buyer is the labor market. Yet it is the one that Adam Smith got almost completely wrong and Charles Darwin got almost completely right. Frank shows us how the Darwinian process of the labor market makes employers rich at the expense of workers, and how they stitched their advantage into the “Right to Work” (at lower wages) laws.
Who was the greater economist--Adam Smith or Charles Darwin? The question seems absurd. Darwin, after all, was a naturalist, not an economist. But Robert Frank, New York Times economics columnist and best-selling author of The Economic Naturalist, predicts that within the next century Darwin will unseat Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. The reason, Frank argues, is that Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. And the consequences of this fact are profound. Indeed, the failure to recognize that we live in Darwin's world rather than Smith's is putting us all at risk by…
