A Fast Company blogger and former McKinsey consultant profiles the next generation business strategists: the "Outthinkers" "Outthinkers" are entrepreneurs and corporate leaders with a new playbook. They see opportunities others ignore, challenge dogma others accept as truth, rally resources others cannot influence, and unleash new strategies that disrupt their markets. Outthink the Competition proves that business competition is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift and that during such revolutions, outthinkers beat traditionalists. Outthink the Competition presents stories of breakthrough companies like Apple, Google, Vistaprint, and Rosetta Stone whose stunning performances defy traditional explanation and will inspire readers to outthink the competition. Core concepts in the book include: Discover the Eight Dimensions of Disruption Learn to play by the Outthinker Playbook Develop the Five Habits of the Outthinker Implement the Outthinker Process It's time to buck tradition in order to stay ahead. Outthink the competition and uncover opportunities hiding in plain sight.

Conventional business wisdom tells us that entrepreneurs are society’s main source of innovation. Young founders leave college with a big idea, get to work in a garage, and build something that changes the world. Typical corporate employees, strangled by slow-moving bureaucracy, are blocked from making transformative discoveries. In Driving Innovation from Within, strategist and advisor Kaihan Krippendorff disproves one of today’s biggest business myths to highlight lessons for innovators and leaders. He reveals how many of the modern world’s most impactful creations were invented by passionate employee innovators. If it were left up to go-it-alone entrepreneurs, we would not have mobile phones, personal computers, or e-mail. Distilling more than 150 interviews with internal innovators and leading experts along with insights from the latest research and today’s most successful companies, from Tencent and Amazon to Mastercard and Starbucks, Krippendorff lays out a step-by-step playbook to unlock innovation from the inside. He maps the barriers that frustrate efforts to disrupt from within and provides tools to remove them, detailing how visionary leaders can create islands of freedom inside an organization to activate existing employees’ potential and beat startups at their own game. Driving Innovation from Within is a practical and inspiring guide to leadership from all levels for those who want the fulfillment of changing the world without leaving their job in order to do it.

Business as usual is no longer enough if an individual or organization wants to stand apart from the competition. Podesta and Gatz ask their readers: What do you bring to the table that is so memorable and outstanding that people will choose to do business with you? They proceed to show you how to out-think and out-perform the competition.

Look at any industry, in any market, and youll find the same attrition strategy playing out everywhere. Companies compete with one another in a mindless race to the bottom, matching feature for feature, which commoditizes markets and drives down prices and margins. Ultimately, no one winsnot even the consumer, as quality, service, and differentiation suffer. Yet there is another way: maneuver strategy. Maneuver relies on speed, agility, insight, and innovation to win the most in any market at the least possible cost. Unlike attrition, maneuver never seeks to attack an incumbent in head-to-head competition. Instead, maneuver uses reconnaissance and insights to identify weaknesses and uses three strategies (preemption, dislocation, and disruption) to attack those vulnerabilities. Using speed and agility, a maneuver strategist wins new spaces before competitors become aware of the opportunity or disrupts the well-laid plans and efficient operations of competitors. As the pace of change accelerates, as speed and agility become more important than size and strength, as new entrants disrupt existing markets, attrition strategy seems outdated. Maneuver strategy, with its focus on speed, agility, and innovation, is the right strategy for the new emerging markets.

Become a Dominant Predator in today’s dog-eat-dog sales environment There’s a hard fact that we all have to face: Buyers have evolved. They’ve become shopaholics. They almost never consider a single vendor when making a buying decision. Instead, they call you—and your competitors—and choose from multiple options. They know that pitting you against your competition always works to their benefit. In today’s sales environment, only the strongest and smartest live to sell another day. Master sales strategist Landy Chase calls these top performers dominant predators—salespeople who consistently win business, at higher prices, by crushing the competition at every turn. He knows exactly how they do it because he’s the one who teaches them how to do it. Now, it’s your turn. In Competitive Selling, Chase reveals the master strategy of the dominant predator, offering a proven, step-by-step process for entering the fray as a prepared and confident warrior. You’ll learn how to: Identify your competition before meeting with the buyer Open competitive selling opportunities Out-flank your competitors using the Client Needs Analysis Eliminate competitors without badmouthing them Stand out to the decision makers Win sales even as the higher-priced option It’s a jungle out there. The goal in today’s winner-take-all world of selling is to make every selling opportunity an unfair fight—in your favor. You have to adapt to your surroundings and take control of your environment. Be assured, your competitors are out there trying to do the same thing. Competitive Selling provides the techniques and skills for seizing the advantage before they even see you coming.

STRATEGY? TACTICS? CONFUSED? How many times have you sat in a meeting and heard someone use the word “strategic?” As in: “We’re not being very strategic about X.” or “We need a strategic plan for project Y.” And, if your organization is like most, everyone in the meeting nods wisely, the meeting drones on, people endlessly debate how to approach the situation at hand, with – generally – no one the wiser as to what “strategic” really means. Next time, respond: “Being strategic means consistently making those core directional choices that will best move us toward our hoped-for future. Is this what we’re doing?” Everybody talks about strategy, but there is a big gap between discussing strategy, defining strategy and actually being strategic -- so you can accomplish something. This book helps you approach business—and life—strategically, explaining what strategy is, why it's important, and how to do it. Being Strategic offers you a step-by-step model and skills for strategic thought and action that are broadly applicable and thoroughly practical: • First, get clear about the problem you’re trying to solve • Then, figure out where you’re starting from • Now, imagine your “castle on the hill,” the future you want to create. • Identify the “trolls under the bridge”; the obstacles in your path • Next, outline the path to the castle: your core strategies and the tactics for implementing them. • Re-evaluate your strategy and your tactics as conditions change Framed around the story of 13th-century Welsh nobles building an actual castle, and weaving in dozens of real-life examples from her practice, which has helped restaurateur Danny Meyer and many others, noted consultant Erika Andersen offers a complete course in turning around a business, or a life.

A former strategist mines new inspiration from a 2,500-year-old treatise born during China's Warring States period. Mid- and upper-level managers and corporate strategists looking for new ways to succeed will benefit greatly from these 36 resurrected stratagems. 1-58799-168-3$29.95 / Thomson Learning / South-Western