Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs

Description

The authors of the bestselling Competing on Internet Time (a Business Week top 10 book) analyze the strategies, principles, and skills of three of the most successful and influential figures in business-Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs-offering lessons for all managers and entrepreneurs on leadership, strategy and execution. In less than a decade, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Andy Grove founded three companies that would define the world of technology and transform our lives. At their peaks, Microsoft, Apple, and Intel were collectively worth some $1.5 trillion. Strategy Rules examines these three individuals collectively for the first time-their successes and failures, commonalities and differences-revealing the business strategies and practices they pioneered while building their firms. David B. Yoffie and Michael A. Cusumano have studied these three leaders and their companies for more than thirty years, while teaching business strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship at Harvard and MIT. In this enlightening guide, they show how Gates, Grove, and Jobs approached strategy and execution in remarkably similar ways-yet markedly differently from their erstwhile competitors-keeping their focus on five strategic rules. Strategy Rules brings together the best practices in strategic management and high-tech entrepreneurship from three path-breaking entrepreneurs who emerged as CEOs of huge global companies. Their approaches to formulating strategy and building organizations offer unique insights for start-up executives as well as the heads of modern multinationals.

Professor David B. Yoffie is the Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He first met Andy Grove in 1987 and joined the Intel board of directors in 1989. He remains the longest-serving member of the Intel board. Yoffie has also written 40 Harvard Business School cases on Intel, Microsoft, and Apple, including the most widely used cases on these companies. He is the author of nine books, including the bestselling Competing on Internet Time with co-author Cusumano. He has also written extensively for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Harvard Business Review.

"Warts and all, here is the inside story on how three unlikely leaders changed the world forever and created a trillion dollars of market cap. Two brilliant business professors with unique access provide lessons for any business and its leaders." -- Scott Cook, Founder & Chairman, Intuit "No one but these co-authors could have distilled the histories of these great CEOs and their world-changing firms into a handful of lucid and logical guidelines for all strategic thinking. Everyone in business --whether in big companies or small -- should read, mark, and digest this book." -- Reed Hundt, CEO, Coalition for Green Capital; former chairman, FCC "Brilliantly and accurately explains how these legendary high-tech CEOs shaped the world we live in. A must read for today's aspiring leaders". -- John Sculley, former Apple CEO "This is not just about strategy for technology companies but about how bold, passionate and deeply knowledgeable leaders work. It is required reading for those who aspire to push the boundaries of business. " -- John Browne, former CEO BP and former board member of Intel