Review by Booklist Review
For the past five years, Hamel has been the biggest name in management gurudom. He and his consulting firm Strategos are regularly profiled in the business press, and his articles frequently appear in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Harvard Business Review. Competing for the Future, which Hamel cowrote with C. K. Prahalad in 1994, won numerous accolades and is still an influential, often-cited work. Strategy is Hamel's mantra. He argues that companies must continuously reevaluate, update, and redefine their core strategies. IKEA, Home Depot, Charles Schwab, and Cisco are some of the "insurgents" leading Hamel's revolution, tipping over such stolid icons as Kodak, K-mart, Compaq, and Westinghouse. Hamel even maintains Nike is on shaky ground. It is not enough, he warns, to start new businesses or develop new products. Victors in the revolution must invent new ways of doing business. Attempting to validate his own "revolutionary" credentials, Hamel has re-created--or at least repackaged--the business book, this one coming with jazzy illustrations and four-color graphics; and it will be heavily promoted. --David Rouse
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hamel's first edition of this volume, published in 2000, urged managers help lead a business revolution by embracing change-developing e-commerce, participating in joint ventures and engaging in selective cooperation. Centuries of incremental progress have given way to a time of revolution, Hamel argued, and companies must change or die. His revised version keeps the focus on far-reaching innovation-imagine the kind of future you want for your company, Hamel urges, and then go out and create it-but he makes sure to dismiss the "helium" of the dot-com bubble and focus on meaningful business change. He highlights Cemex, the third largest cement company in the world, as proof that "new attitudes and new values can change an old industry"; UPS, too, gets the nod as another "gray-haired revolutionary." (Unsurprisingly, Hamel's positive Enron profile from the earlier edition gets the axe.) Hamel's presentation is powerful and his core argument that corporate leaders must be more entrepreneurial remains convincing; the worst that can be said about this volume is that, by rehashing his earlier writings, Hamel may not be fully following his own advice. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
