"This book will become the definitive text on strategy. Its strong academic underpinning supports completely pragmatic suggestions for corporations to craft their strategies. A great guide to the subject!"

-- James A. Lawrence, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, General Mills

"At Last! A strategy textbook that combines state of the art understanding and an in-depth analysis of both competition and organizational evolution. It's a pleasure to read a text that is simultaneously crystal clear and yet deeply informed."

--Rebecca Henderson, Eastman Kodak LFM Professor of Management, MIT Sloan School

"A fresh look at a critically important topic. In the age of the Internet, the fundamentals of strategic management are often forgotten. Sloaner, Shephard, and Podolny elucidate the princi-les of strategy overlaid with the reality of organizational complexity. The frameworks provided by the authors are rich and enlightening."

-- Michelangelo Volpi, Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President, Cisco System, Inc.

"Saloner, Shepard, and Podolny provide a rigorous, theoretically grounded framework for examining the central questions of business strategy, incorporating both classic and recent academic perspectives."

-- Daniel A. Leventhal, Julian Aresty Professor of Management and Economics, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

"Strategic Management is comprehensive and creative. It's grounded both in the latest academic thinking and relevant, pragmatic business applications. It provides truly distinctive approaches in several areas, including the importance of sound strategic logic amidst the dynamic interactions of a company's context and its own actions, and the critical balance between organization and strategy. I highly recommend Saloner, Shepard and Podolny's text for both students and practitioners of business strategy"

--William F. Meehan III, Director and Chairman, West Coast Practice, McKinsey and Company, Inc. and Lecturer in Strategic Management, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

"The authors do a masterful job of integrating the elements of strategy; the internal and external; the applied and conceptual; and the sociological and economic perspectives. Strategic Management is a superb resource for developing a rich understanding of the forces that drive strategy in the modern economy."

-- Robert Gertner, Professor of Economics and Strategy, The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

Submitted by Publisher, January, 2004

This book is written for current and future general managers who have or will have overall responsibility for a business. The authors provide a set of frameworks, tools, and concepts to build this capability. The goal of the book is to provide insights into organizations and strategy that will help general managers make strategic thinking in their firms pervasive, effective, and rewarding.

Business Strategy.
Competitive Advantage.
Internal Context: Organization Design.
Organization and Competitive Advantage.
External Context: Industry Analysis.
The Spectrum of Competition and Niche Markets.
Competition in Concentrated Markets.
Entry and the Advantage of Incumbency.
Creating and Capturing Value in the Value Chain.
Strategic Management in a Changing Environment.
Strategy in Markets with Demand-Side Increasing Returns.
Globalization and Strategy.
Corporate Strategy: Managing for Value in a Multi-Business Firms.
The Strategy Process.

Appendix.
Credits.
Index.