W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne are Codirectors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute and Professors of Strategy at INSEAD. They are the authors of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers BLUE OCEAN SHIFT and BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY, which is widely regarded as one of the most iconic and influential strategy books ever published. Blue Ocean Strategy has sold over 4 million copies, is available in 46 languages, and is a best-seller on five continents.

W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, global premier management thinkers, challenge everything you thought you understood about the requirements for strategic success in this perennial classic, embraced by businesses and sectors worldwide. Blue Ocean Strategy, widely regarded as one of the most classic and influential strategy books ever written, contends that ruthless competition culminates in nothing more than a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a decreasing profit pool. Based on a review of 150 strategic movements (covering more than 100 years and 30 industries), the authors believe that developing "blue oceans", untapped new market spaces ripe for growth, is the key to long-term success.

Blue Ocean Strategy provides ideas and methods that any firm may utilize to construct and capture their own blue seas, as well as a methodical approach to rendering the competition obsolete. This enlarged edition contains:

• The writers have added a new preface: "Help! My Ocean Is Turning Red"
• All instances and examples in the book have received red updates, bringing their tales up to date.
• Two new chapters, as well as an extended third, address the most pressing topics readers have posed over the last decade: Alignment, Renewal, and Red Ocean Traps.

This bestseller book charts a bold new path to winning the future, upending standard thinking about strategy. Consider this your road map to establishing uncontested market space and rendering the competition obsolete.

Author: W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontested/dp/1625274491/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 3616 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #3,477 in Books

#1 in Industrial Marketing (Books)

#1 in Industrial Management & Leadership

#1 in Global Marketing (Books)

Verne Harnish is the founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO), which has over 14,000 members worldwide. He chaired EO's premier CEO program, "Birthing of Giants," which was held at MIT for fifteen years and which he still teaches today. Verne has spent the last three decades as the founder and CEO of Scaling Up, a global executive education and coaching firm with over 180 partners on six continents.

Verne Harnish's best-selling book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits was first published over a decade ago. The first major revision of this business classic, Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0), details practical tools and tactics for developing an industry-dominating business. Scaling Up was developed so that everyone from frontline staff to senior executives may get aligned in contributing to a company's progress. Scaling Up focuses on the four primary decision areas that every business must address: people, strategy, execution, and cash.

Scaling Up includes a series of new one-page tools, including the updated One-Page Strategic Plan and the Rockefeller Habits ChecklistTM, which have been used by over 40,000 businesses around the world to successfully scale their businesses, many to $10 million, $100 million, and $1 billion and beyond, while having fun along the way!

Author: Verne Harnish

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Scaling-Up-Mastering-Rockefeller-Habits/dp/0986019593/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 1669 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #3,532 in Books

#1 in Nonprofit Organizations & Charities (Books)

#3 in Strategy & Competition

#6 in Strategic Business Planning

Private equity is more efficient and competitive than ever before. And, in this era of private equity, the bargain buys, arbitrage possibilities, and financial engineering tactics that investors historically relied on to boost profits are no longer as juicy or as reliable.

This has increased the pressure on investors and management to nail post-closing value development in order to stay competitive. As a result, in order for many organizations and executives to remain competitive in today's Value Creation Era of private equity, yesterday's blueprint for success must alter.

Dan Cremons sets out to solve one of the most pressing concerns facing private equity investors and executives today, drawing on 1,000+ years of combined experience from 60+ successful mid-market private equity professionals and executives.

How can investors and executives go ahead in this era of private equity by driving value creation in their firms more consistently, reliably, and methodically?

This book is for you if you're an investor or CEO struggling with the same question. Winning Techniques:

• Describes the market realities and how we arrived at the Value Creation Era.
• Value creation is broken down into actionable components.
• Readers are given a huge arsenal of tried-and-true "winning plays" for driving value generation throughout the deal lifecycle.
• Shows how value creation success is nearly impossible to achieve without a people-focused culture and a winning team.
• Provides a road plan for creating value throughout the lifecycle of a contract.

This book, brimming with actionable information direct from the trenches, may help private equity professionals and executives speed equity value creation, produce greater profits, and advance their careers. It is regarded as one of the best books on business competition.

Author: Dan Cremons

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Moves-Private-Equity-Backed-Companies/dp/B0B2TRD4N8/

Ratings: 5.0 out of 5 stars (from 10 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #4,301 in Books

#1 in Business Franchises

#1 in Consolidation & Merger

#1 in Valuation (Books)

John Doerr is an engineer, entrepreneur, and the chairman of Kleiner Perkins. He was an early investor and board member at Google and Amazon, where he helped to establish over 500,000 employment and the world's second and third most valuable firms.

In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up to whom he had recently committed $12.5 million, his largest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin possessed incredible technology, entrepreneurial zeal, and lofty goals, but no solid business model. Page and Brin had to learn how to make difficult decisions on priorities while keeping their team on track if Google was to change the world (or even survive survives fierce competition). They'd have to know when to abandon losing bets and fail quickly. And they required timely, relevant data to track their progress and to quantify what was important.

Doerr educated them about a tried-and-true method for achieving operational excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He encountered OKRs as an engineer at Intel in the 1970s, where the renowned Andy Grove ("the finest manager of his or any era") led the best-run firm Doerr had ever seen. Doerr later shared Grove's idea with almost fifty companies as a venture capitalist. It worked whenever the approach was faithfully followed.

Doerr provides a wide range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies in Measure What Matters, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to highlight the focus, agility, and rapid development that OKRs have spurred at so many great businesses and help them win the fierce competition between businesses. This book will assist a new generation of leaders in capturing the same enchantment.

The book describes Grove's idea and give you the method for achieving operational excellence: Objectives and Key Results. In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we want to achieve; key results indicate how those top priorities will be met with specific, measurable actions inside a defined time frame. Everyone's objectives, from entry level to CEO, are visible to the entire organization.

The advantages are enormous. OKRs highlight the most important work of a company. They concentrate effort and promote coordination. They help staff stay on track. They connect objectives across silos in order to unite and strengthen the entire organization. OKRs improve workplace satisfaction and retention along the way.

Author: John Doerr

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundation/dp/0525536221/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 5564 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #4,474 in Books

#5 in Strategy & Competition

#8 in Strategic Business Planning

#15 in Systems & Planning

Dean of the University of Houston-Victoria School of Business Administration is KEN COLWELL PHD, MBA. He was previously dean of Long Island University-School Brooklyn's of Business, Public Administration, and Information Sciences. He was previously the director of entrepreneurial programs at the University of Miami School of Business Administration, as well as a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Drexel University.

Have you ever wanted to create your own business and live life on your own terms? This book will teach you exactly what you need to know to stand out in a crowd! Do you have a great concept for a product or service but aren't sure how to turn it into a profitable business? Are you a current business owner that struggles to find and offer truly world-class value to your customers? Do you want to turn your pastime into a full-fledged business that would allow you to live the life you deserve? Then you must have this book.

Ken Colwell simply delivers the basic elements that all new entrepreneurs need to know to get started, discover success, and live the life of their dreams in his comprehensive Starting a Business QuickStart Guide.

Students of business and entrepreneurship, small business owners, managers, and aspiring entrepreneurs will all find a lot of information in the Starting a Business QuickStart Guide.

This book serves as a useful guide for your journey to entrepreneurial success, from the very first steps of envisioning your enterprise through winning your first clients, offering value, and generating a profit and then compete with other businesses. Colwell's clear voice, significant knowledge, and simple presentation combine to make this book a must-have resource for any aspiring entrepreneur's library!

The Starting a Business QuickStart Guide is Ideal for:

• Aspiring Entrepreneurs with a Lot of Passion!
• Students of All Ages Who Are Entrepreneurial!
• Newcomers with No Prior Experience!
• Managers, business owners, and decision makers are taking on new responsibilities!

You'll Learn:

• How to Tell the Difference Between an Idea and an Opportunity!
• What Makes a Great Entrepreneurial Opportunity!
• The First Steps You Must Take To Get Your Business Off The Ground!
• Pricing, competition, customer identification, marketing, and distribution have all been deconstructed!
• The REAL Building Blocks of an Entrepreneurial Mindset!
• How To Create Your Value Proposition!
• How to Create an In-Depth Business Plan!

Author: Ken Colwell PhD MBA

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Business-QuickStart-Guide-Entrepreneurial/dp/1945051825/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 3013 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #3,649 in Books

#1 in Home-Based Businesses

#1 in Self-Employment

#1 in Business School Guides (Books)

Snowflake Inc's Chairman and CEO is FRANK SLOOTMAN. Frank has over 25 years of experience in the corporate software market as an entrepreneur and executive. Mr. Slootman was the CEO and President of ServiceNow from 2011 to 2017, growing the company from about $100 million in revenue to $1.4 billion through an IPO.

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the most accomplished leaders in enterprise growth in the tech world, having led Snowflake to the greatest software IPO ever after previously leading ServiceNow and Data Domain to exponential growth and the public market. For the first time, he exposes his leadership method in Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity.

Amp It Up provides a thorough examination of what it takes to restructure an organization for maximum development and scalability. Slootman demonstrates that most executives can significantly increase their organization's performance without making costly changes to its people, structure, or core business model and they don't need an army of consultants to accomplish it. What they do require is for people to be aligned around what matters and to execute with urgency and intensity every day.

Leading for extraordinary development entails declaring war on mediocrity, challenging the status quo, and making difficult decisions on a daily basis, all while remaining relentlessly focused on the purpose. Amp It Up offers the first principles to drive such transition, as well as pragmatic suggestions for constructing a business around them.

Among the best books on business competition, Amp It Up is a must-read resource for executives, entrepreneurs, founders, managers, and leaders of all types who want to unlock a company's growth potential and scale it to heights they never dreamed imaginable.

Author: Frank Slootman

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Amp-Unlocking-Hypergrowth-Expectations-Intensity/dp/1119836115/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 496 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #7,367 in Books

#4 in Business Management (Books)

#8 in Strategy & Competition

#11 in Strategic Business Planning

Alexander Osterwalder is a speaker, workshop facilitator, and strategy consultant who has worked with organizations in 20 countries across all continents.

Yves Pigneur, PhD, is a management professor and the director of the Information Systems Institute at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He has taught at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver as a visiting professor.

Business Model Generation is a how-to guide for visionaries, game changers, and challengers who want to defy outdated business models and create tomorrow's firms. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities but lacks a strategy to stay ahead of your competition, you need Business Model Generation.

The book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It was co-created by 470 "Business Model Canvas" practitioners from 45 countries. It discusses the most common Business Model patterns and helps you reinterpret them for your particular environment, based on insights from top business thinkers. You will learn how to understand, build, and implement a game-changing business model or how to assess and renovate an existing one. Along the route, you'll have a far better understanding of your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and core value offer.

Business Model Generation includes practical innovation approaches utilized by major consultants and corporations around the world, such as 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. It is intended for those who are willing to forsake old ways of thinking and embrace new methods of value creation: executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders from all organizations. If you're willing to break the rules, you're part of "the business model generation!"

Author: Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 3426 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #8,592 in Books

#10 in Strategy & Competition

#14 in Strategic Business Planning

#22 in Systems & Planning

Ralph D. Sawyer, one of America's foremost experts on Chinese warfare, has significant experience working with various intelligence and defense agencies. Sawyer has spent the last thirty years lecturing and conducting international consultancy work focusing on China, after studying at MIT and Harvard and briefly teaching at a university.

Among the best books on business competition, The Art of War written by Ralph D. Sawyer is probably certainly the most famous study of strategy ever written. This treatise is credited with influencing some of history's most famous military exploits. People all over the world have long turned to Art of War for advice on how to succeed in various competitive scenarios, and organizations all over the world now make this book obligatory reading for their leaders.

In this translation, Chinese combat specialist Ralph D. Sawyer places the Art of War in its appropriate historical perspective, recounting various conflicts that Sun-tzu either conducted or may have inspired, and provides a remarkably accurate and accessible edition.

Author: Ralph D. Sawyer

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/081331951X/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 2091 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #9,881 in Books

#4 in History of Education

#9 in Military Strategy History (Books)

#13 in Strategy & Competition

A.G. Lafley has been named CEO, President, and Chairman of Procter & Gamble, where he previously served as CEO from 2000 to 2009. P&G's sales doubled, profits quadrupled, and market value increased by more than $100 billion under Lafley's leadership, and its portfolio of billion-dollar brands including Tide, Pampers, Olay, and Gillette grew from 10 to 24 as a result of his emphasis on winning strategic choices, consumer-driven innovation, and reliable, sustainable growth.

Roger Martin is the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a consultant to CEOs on strategy, design, innovation, and integrative thinking. Roger was voted the world's sixth top management thinker by Thinkers50 in 2011. This is his sixth book; he also writes for Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications.

Strategy is not difficult. But it's difficult. It's difficult because it requires people and organizations to make concrete decisions about their future, something that most businesses do not do.

Now, two of today's most prominent business thinkers go to the heart of strategy, explaining what it is, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to implement it. And they utilize one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the last century, which they co-created, to demonstrate their thesis.

In just ten years, A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, and strategic adviser Roger Martin doubled P&G's sales, quadrupled its profits, and increased its market value by more than $100 billion. Playing to Win shows how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success drawn from their years of experience at P&G and the Rotman School of Management, where Martin is dean.

The end outcome is a winning strategy. Lafley and Martin have developed a set of five critical strategic options that, when addressed holistically, will put you ahead of your competitors. They are as follows:

• What is our winning goal?
• Where are we going to play?
• How will we triumph?
• What capabilities do we need to be successful?
• What management systems are required to back up our decisions?

The stories of how P&G won again and again by applying this method to iconic brands like Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly demonstrate how deciding on a strategic approach and then making the right choices to support it makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.

Author: A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Win-Strategy-Really-Works/dp/142218739X/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 1414 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #10,254 in Books

#15 in Strategy & Competition

#22 in Strategic Business Planning

#29 in Systems & Planning

Richard Rumelt is one of the world's most important strategists and managers. According to The Economist, he is one of twenty-five living people who have had the greatest influence on management concepts and corporate practice. According to McKinsey Quarterly, he is "strategy's strategist" and a "giant in the field of strategy."

A leader's primary responsibility is to develop and implement a strategy. A good strategy is a particular and logical response to and approach to overcoming roadblocks. A good strategy works by concentrating and directing power where it will have the most impact. However, Rumelt demonstrates that there is an increasing and regrettable propensity to connect "strategy" with Mom-and-apple-pie values, airy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial ambitions.

He debunks these components of "poor strategy" in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy and awakens an appreciation of the potential of a "good strategy." He introduces nine sources of power, from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth, that are eye-opening yet practical tools that can be put to use on Monday morning, and he uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. Apple to General Motors, the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, a small local market to Wal-Mart, Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, Cisco Systems to Paccar, and Global Crossing to the 2007-08 financial crisis are all specific examples.

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy is the result of Rumelt's decades of digging beneath the surface to address difficult questions with honesty and integrity. It reflects an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of human character. The book is one of the best books on business competition.

Author: Richard Rumelt

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307886239/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 2437 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #23,852 in Books

#33 in Strategy & Competition

#56 in Strategic Business Planning

#66 in Systems & Planning