For those of you who don’t have the time and money to go to business school, don’t worry! You can learn Strategy by reading books and putting the lessons learned into practice.
Three business school professors have travelled through the USA visiting SMEs and small business owners to uncover how they run their business and put strategy into action (http://www.roadside-mba.com/).
Roadside MBA: Back Road Lessons for Entrepreneurs, Executive, and Small Business Owners
written by Michael Mazzeo (Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management), Paul Oyer (Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business) and Scott Schaefer (University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business). The book covers the following contents:
- Scaling a business
- Establishing barriers to entry
- Product differentiation
- Setting prices
- Managing your brand
- Negotiating effectively
- Hiring
- Incentive for employees
- Delegation
- Battling the big boys
- Strategy is a continuous process
You will also discover a new law of business, called ‘Mazzeo’s law’:
Mazzeor’s law : The answer to every strategic question is “It depends”.
Corollary 1: The trick is knowing what it depends on.
Corollary 2: If the answer to a question isn’t “It depends”, then it’s not a strategic question.
You’ll find the book on Amazon UK, as well as many other bookshops.