Zoom: How 12 Exceptional Companies Are Navigating the Road to the Next Economy - James M. Citrin - Hardcover - 1ST

CHAPTER 1 "Are we there yet?" The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. --Paul Valery Are we there yet?" is a familiar and sometimes grating refrain for parents who take to the highways with their children. It's also the sentiment of many weary business travelers along the road to the era when technology, services, and knowledge combine to create a frictionless economy with seamless markets and price transparency. In such a Utopian world, information is readily available and infinitely searchable, and every product is custom-designed and produced as needed. The upshot: low inventory costs, improved quality, and lower prices. An ideal business scenario. Are we there yet? Trouble is, no one really knows where there is. Parents have an advantage: They know precisely where they're heading (most of the time). They know how long it will take, how much gas they'll need, and where they can stop to stretch their legs. Managers nowadays aren't so lucky. For those of us struggling to apply the latest technologies, define new businesses, attract talented employees, and achieve profitable growth amid a difficult economy, unrelenting competition, and unforgiving capital markets, there is no simple road map to success. This is precisely why it's tougher than ever to be an effective leader and manager today. No one is going to fake their way through to sustainable success in the years ahead. And unfortunately, no one can prescribe easy remedies. They simply don't exist. The prickly problems are far too complex, and winning strategies are only beginning to emerge. But it is possible to examine how some of the country's top companies are successfully building thriving enterprises based on the new realities unleashed by technological changes, including the Internet. My research team and I have spoken with thousands of executives and pored over scores of companies. In the end we've selected 13 of the very best to profile, including eBay, Sun Microsystems, Wal-Mart, Enron, Cisco Systems, and General Electric, to cull out practical management lessons for today's business executives. It is my intent to strip away the jargon and management fads in the popular press to offer enduring ideas and strategies for tomorrow's emerging economy. These strategies are based on both timeless leadership principles and today's successful new management practices. Together, the blend of the lasting and the new make up the rules for navigating the road to the future. While they won't necessarily transform your business overnight, in time, these methods will help to build a more effective and confident management team in an era marked by tremendous upheaval and uncertainty. "Upheaval and uncertainty." This hasn't always been the best way to characterize American business. For most of the 20th century, businesses operated on calculated risk, and successful companies followed fairly predictable linear paths: Identify a niche, and then develop, market, and sell a product or service. The most significant challenges to the corporation used to be efficient manufacturing, cost containment, and consumer or industrial marketing. The major corporations that dominated the economy were asset-intensive operations that produced hard goods like automobiles or washing machines, resource-based products like oil, or infrastructure-laden services such as railroads or telephones. They transformed manufacturing into a science, gaining greater efficiencies every year. There were points along the business highway when other countries, such as Japan in the 1980s, surpassed American manufacturing abilities. But major U.S. companies eventually faced down that challenge and reasserted themselves. This is not to belittle the business achievements of the last century. Efficient production, cost control, and effective marketing are tremendously complex challenges; but they are prCitrin, James M. is the author of 'Zoom: How 12 Exceptional Companies Are Navigating the Road to the Next Economy - James M. Citrin - Hardcover - 1ST' with ISBN 9780385501316 and ISBN 0385501315.