“Based on rigorous analysis and loaded with insight, this book is a must read for any manager who hopes to hit that sweet spot of organizational success year after year.”

—MARGARET PETERAF, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

“The author develops a solid framework that can help organizations direct their global strategic positioning. The use of many examples of both successful and unsuccessful organizations across many different industries is very unique and puts the book among the best that I have read in the last 10 years.”

—AVI FIEGENBAUM, Area Head, Strategic Management, Technion

LEARN WHAT REALLY COUNTS FROM THE CONTINUED SUCCESS OF TOP 3% PERFORMING COMPANIES AND HOW TO BENEFIT FROM THEIR STRATEGIES

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, author of BIG WINNERS AND BIG LOSERS: THE 4 SECRETS OF LONG-TERM BUSINESS SUCCESS AND FAILURE, (Wharton School Publishing, Publication Date: November 14, 2005, $27.99, Hardcover, ISBN 0131451324) systematically reviewed detailed performance metrics for the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations from 1992-2002.

Drawing on this unprecedented research, Marcus identified the few companies that consistently outperformed their industry's averages for a full decade¾firms like Amphenol, Ball, Family Dollar, Brown and Brown, Activision, Dreyer's, Forest Labs, and Fiserv¾that get little publicity. But their success is no accident: they've discovered patterns which were largely unnoticed by competitors. Marcus also identifies patterns associated with consistent losers: these patterns were regularly followed by many of the world's best known and highly celebrated companies.

BIG WINNERS AND BIG LOSERS shows you that consistent winners followed (1) well-executed niche strategies that balanced (2) agility, (3) discipline, and (4) focus. Agility brought them to market positions that offered unique opportunities, discipline allowed them to protect the positions they occupied and focus made it possible for them to fully exploit these positions. Other firms might match the big winners’ individual traits, but they could not recreate this overall pattern. “The differences in outcome are not random or a matter of mere chance,” says Marcus. “The circumstances that the big winners and big losers faced were similar. What explains the differences in performance is that the winners pursued and executed different strategies than the losers.”

Similarly, big losers do not fail because of one or two bad qualities. Their poor performance is a consequence of a combination of many bad attributes. Big losers migrate to or are stuck in contested or sour spots. They are rigid about not abandoning these spots, they are inept in defending and protecting them, and they are too diffuse to fully exploit them.

From this book you will learn how to identify successful patterns for your company. You must build on strengths you already have, realistically assess weaknesses, and create sustainable advantage in a planned and logical way. To be a consistent winner, you must understand the overall pattern you want to create, determine which traits you have now and which are missing, and understand how to combine these traits into larger wholes your competitors cannot easily copy. “Winning is not about achieving one-time gains,” says Marcus. “It is too demanding and difficult for this. It also does not involve digging in and defending a position against all odds. A stagnant and defensive stance where your sole aim is to protect the spot you occupy also has its limits. After you have identified, occupied, and fortified a position, you must take full advantage of it. You have to really focus on it.”

According to Marcus, managers should not lose sight of the fact that the broader patterns that create advantage and disadvantage combine contradictory elements. Managers must blend agility with focus and discipline and avoid rigidity, ineptness, and diffuseness. Big winners brought together these opposing traits, but managing the tension among them was not easy.

BIG WINNERS AND BIG LOSERS highlights the patterns of the successful and unsuccessful firms: on the one hand, a pattern of advantage built on a well-defined market niche achieved through agility, discipline, and focus; and, on the other hand, a pattern of disadvantage resting on a poorly defined market niche sustained by rigidity, ineptness, and diffuseness.

Choose the right path and you’re sure to be a big winner, but choose the wrong one and you’re certain to be a big loser.

MORE PRAISE FOR BIG WINNERS AND BIG LOSERS

“Alfred Marcus’s new book Big Winners and Big Loserscompares and contrasts the practices of successful and failing firms. Most importantly, his study offers thoughtful definitions, examples, and boundaries to each of the four best practices, which will help practicing managers apply the prescriptions to their own situations.”

—WILL MITCHELL, The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University

“This book provides an excellent synthesis of the strategies that differentiate successful firms from the rest of the world. A must read for those looking to build high-performance organizations.”

—RANJAY GULATI, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

“The careful, detailed research in this new book reinforces an important theme: successful companies must be able to balance complementary and at times contradictory skills—agility to find the right markets, focus and discipline to succeed, and then agility again to re-focus and adapt as markets change.”

—MICHAEL CUSUMANO, MIT Sloan School of Management, and author of The Business Software

About the Author

ALFRED A. MARCUS is the 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 and at the Center for Technological Development and Leadership at the University of Minnesota, he teaches and conducts research in strategic management, the business environment, and business ethics. From 1995-2001, he chaired the Strategic Management and Organization Department. He has also served as Visiting Professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Marcus is author or coeditor of eleven books, including Management Strategy: Achieving Sustained Competitive Advantage (McGraw Hill, 2005) and Winning Moves: Cases in Strategic Management (Marsh Publications, 2006). He has published articles in numerous 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.

Professor Marcus received his Ph.D. from Harvard and undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Chicago.

About Wharton School Publishing

Wharton School Publishing is dedicated to presenting the world's foremost business thinkers in print, audio and interactive formats. All titles must be approved by a senior Wharton faculty review board to ensure that they are timely, important, conceptually sound, empirically based, and implementable. The editorial focus is on applicable knowledge enabling readers to gain new insights into the issues shaping the future of business, and to plan and take action to achieve their goals. Wharton School Publishing is a partnership between Pearson Education, the world's leading education company, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized around the world for its academic strengths across every major discipline and at every level of business education. Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school in the nation, Wharton has approximately 4,600 undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral students, more than 8,000 participants in its executive education programs annually, and an alumni network of more than 80,000 worldwide.

BIG WINNERS AND BIG LOSERS: THE 4 SECRETS OF LONG-TERM BUSINESS SUCCESS AND FAILURE

By Alfred A. Marcus
Wharton School Publishing
Publication Date: November 14, 2005
$27.99, Hardcover
ISBN 0131451324
Visit www.whartonsp.com for an exclusive audio summary.