Big winners and big losers (1st ed ) The 4 Secrets of Long-Term Business Success and Failure

What keeps great companies winning, year after year, even as yesterday's most hyped businesses fall by the wayside? It's not what you think - or what you've read. To find the real answers, strategic management expert Alfred Marcus systematically reviewed detailed performance metrics for the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations, identifying 3% who've consistently outperform their industry's averages for a full decade. Many of these firms get little publicity: firms like Amphenol, Ball, Family Dollar, Brown and Brown, Activision, Dreyer's, Forest Labs, and Fiserv. But their success is no accident: they've discovered patterns of success that have largely gone unnoticed elsewhere. Marcus also identified patterns associated with consistently inferior performance: patterns reflected in many of the world's most well-known companies. Drawing on this unprecedented research, Big Winners and Big Losers shows you what really matters most. You'll learn how consistent winners build the strategies that drive their success how they move towards market spaces offering superior opportunity and how they successfully manage the tensions between agility, discipline, and focus. You'll learn how to identify the right patterns of success for your company, build on the strengths you already have, realistically assess your weaknesses, and build sustainable advantage one step at a time, in a planned and logical way.

Alfred A. Marcus is Edson Spencer Chair of Strategic Management and Technological leadership at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management, where he has been on the faculty since 1984. At Carlson, he teaches and conducts research in strategic management, macroeconomics, business ethics, and business and the natural environment. He has also served as Visiting Professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Marcus is author or coeditor of eleven books and has published numerous articles in journals, such as the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, California Management Review, and The Journal of Forecasting. He has consulted and worked with many major corporations including 3M, Corning, Excel Energy, General Mills, and IBM.