The Quintessence of Strategic Management: What You Really Need to Know to Survive in Business

Having read this book: You will have a basic understanding of strategy and the process of strategic management. You will know the most important strategy tools (incl. the respective original literature) and how they interact. You will be aware of the focal areas and considerations of strategy in practice. You will be able to analyze and interpret business information with regard to the underlying strategic notions.

Table of Contents
Introduction: Essential Strategy Know-How and Nothing More
1 Strategy and Strategic Management: A First Basic Understanding
1.1 What is Strategy and How is it Developed?
1.1.1 Modern Opinions
1.1.2 Basic Historical Concepts
1.1.3 A First Example: The Second Punic War
1.2 The Theoretical Response: Strategy as an Integrated Concept
1.2.1 Strategy
1.2.2 Strategic Management
1.3 The Process-Based Response: Strategic Planning – An Organized Understanding of Strategy Processes
1.3.1 General Planning
1.3.2 Strategic Planning
1.3.3 Operational Planning
1.3.4 Steering and Controlling the Operational Planning
1.3.5 Implications of Strategic Planning as a Concept
1.4 The Innovative Response: Creative Rule-Breaking as an Alternative Way of Executing Strategy Processes
1.4.1 Why Rules Need to be Broken
1.4.2 The Rule-Breaking Strategy Creator – Four Steps to Breaking the Rules
2 Strategic Frames of Reference: The Key Tools of Strategy Determination, their Principles, and How they Interact
2.1 Why it is Important to Structure the Market, the Competition, and Your Own Company Properly
2.1.1 Interdependencies Between the Key Approaches
2.1.2 The Harvard Business School SWOT Analysis – The Data Basis for all Interpretive Tools of Strategy Determination
2.2 Analyzing Corporate Strategies
2.2.1 Horizontal Growth Options: Ansoff’s Product/Market Matrix
2.2.2 Portfolio Management: Portfolio Analysis (Matrix)
2.3 Analyzing Business Strategies
2.3.1 The Market-Based View: The Structure-Conduct-Performance Paradigm and Porter’s Five Forces
2.3.2 The Resource-Based View: The Core Competency Approach
2.3.3 Dynamic Markets: The Simple Rules Approach
2.4 Network Approaches: The Business Model – An Integrative Frame of Reference for Describing a Strategy
2.4.1 From Old to New Business Models
2.4.2 The Three Components of a Business Model
3 Current Focal Areas in Strategy Practice: Four Significant Management Concepts of the Past 20 Years
3.1 Growth Strategies
3.1.1 Value-Based Management, Protecting Your Market Share, Limits and Approaches
3.1.2 Seven Growth Strategies in Strategy Practice
3.2 Business Process Reengineering
3.2.1 Belief and Reality
3.2.2 An Implementation Example
3.3 Strategic Brand Management
3.3.1 The Brand: Complex and Meanwhile Indispensable
3.3.2 Examples of Brand Evaluation Using Positioning Analysis
3.4 Strategic Gaming
3.4.1 Game Theory: A Way of Dynamically Modeling Competition
3.4.2 Dynamic Competitive Simulation in Reality
Summary: It’s Your Turn!