The Profit Zone : How Strategic Business Design Will Lead You to Tomorrow's Profits

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Summary: You'll get your moneys worth with this one
Review: This book definitely sharpens your thinking on how profit happens - the reason you're in business in the first place. Many managers and "business designers" would do well to read the parts on how a too single-minded focus on things such as market share and revenue growth actually might lead to value being destroyed rather than created. This book shows how value does get created: how innovative thinking and business designing will induce your present and future customers to pay for your profit.

Rating:
Summary: It's the profit model, stupid.
Review: What a nice read. Easy-to-understand graphs combined with a concise lexicon to describe not the business model of leading-edge (read profitable!) companies, but rather their profit model. Companies like Disney, GE, ABB, Nike are profiled in this book and the steps they took to ensure profit stream in the face of business change. Slywotzky, et al prove that the management consultant's construct is a good model for envisioning successful corporate growth. I especially liked the value-migration metrics Slywotzky, et al introduce as an indicator of a positive or negative flow of value into/out of a company. Great book.