Beyond Competitive Advantage: How to Solve the Puzzle of Sustaining Growth While Creating Value

Description

Every company needs a unique and insightful corporate theory to sustain value-creating growth. Such a theory, if done right, should help guide decisions about what assets and activities to pursue, what investments to make, and what strategies to adopt. It's not easy, though, because the process is rife with pitfalls and tradeoffs. Strategy professor Todd Zenger provides the details of the components of a great corporate theory and helps readers reconcile the problems they'll face in pursuing the key activities of growth. Beyond Competitive Advantage provides guidance to the thoughtful strategic leader or the manager tasked with developing strategies for sustaining value and creating growth.

Todd Zenger is the N. Eldon Tanner Chair in Strategy and Strategic Leadership at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah and holds the University of Utah designation as a Presidential Professor. Zenger is a global expert on topics of corporate strategy, strategic leadership, and organization design. He has lectured widely on these topics to academic audiences at most of the world's leading business schools, and his work has been broadly published in the leading academic journals in management and strategy.

"Zenger's important new study argues that today's successful strategist needs to develop a 'corporate theory of value creation' that can provide ongoing guidance in making more coherent decisions." -- Forbes "The book illuminates these ideas in depth, looking at various aspects of strategy your firm might encounter, including acquisitions and building relationships with partners. Zenger offers enough examples to provide clarity about how to apply this advancement to your firm's competitive advantage." -- The Globe & Mail "Beyond Competitive Advantage will make you reconsider creating and sustaining corporate value as well as your role in the process." -- Strategic Finance Magazine "Drawing from companies that have done this successfully, such as Disney, Zenger provides ample reasons for a company to pursue its own unique corporate theory." -- TD magazine (Association for Talent Development) ADVANCE PRAISE for Beyond Competitive Advantage: Ryan Smith, founder and CEO, Qualtrics-- "Those of us who lead rapidly growing businesses know there is a lot more to a successful company than its sources of competitive advantage. Todd Zenger's concept of a corporate theory provides us with that 'more.' He shows us how to go beyond short-term strategy in order to build businesses that make a big impact and endure. Beyond Competitive Advantage will help all business leaders ask smarter questions about the big challenges they face." Jim Turley, retired Chairman and CEO, Ernst & Young-- "Todd Zenger provides business leaders with a robust framework for making wiser decisions about where to play and how to win. And his theory of corporate advantage offers the most convincing explanation I've heard about what sets great companies apart from good ones." Jan Rivkin, Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School-- "How can you create value again and again in an uncertain world? You need a theory that guides you toward bets that your firm is uniquely qualified to win. Todd Zenger mixes practical examples with the latest scholarship to show how a great corporate theory can help you decide what markets to pursue, which assets to assemble, and how to organize and lead." Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School-- "Todd Zenger tackles a classic problem: How does a large corporation create sustained value for its shareholders? Built on decades of careful academic study, Beyond Competitive Advantage is full of surprising and important insights about how some companies are able to beat the odds by developing a clear and distinct point of view." Gregory Goff, CEO, Tesoro Corporation-- "Todd Zenger's concept of the corporate theory is a great guide for developing and changing strategies over time and provides a compelling explanation of why some companies consistently turn in superior performance. As a CEO, I am constantly challenged to create value, and Todd's insights are invaluable."