Product Description

The book that answers the most fundamental question in business: Where Will I Make a Profit Tomorrow?

Why do some companies create sustained, superior profits year after year? Why are they always far ahead of their competitors in discovering the ever-changing profit zones of their industry? Why do others languish as their traditional way of doing business turns into a no-profit zone? The Profit Zone provides the answers. It is a brilliant, original, and practical explanation of how and why high profit happens.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100701 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-26
• Released on: 2002-02-26
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.com
For years, the prevailing wisdom in business was that profitability was a byproduct of market share; get the biggest piece of the market and profit will surely follow. But in the last 10 years, this formula has time and again proved itself wrong. Companies such as DEC, GM, Ford, United Airlines, Kodak, and Sears have all demonstrated that market share does not necessarily lead to profitability.

The Profit Zone looks at how profit happens in today's customer-driven economy. The authors demonstrate why market share often leads to a "no-profit zone" and identify 22 profit models that have helped dozens of companies consistently make money. Included are in-depth looks at companies--Disney, GE, Microsoft, Intel, Charles Schwab--that have successfully redesigned their businesses and dramatically increased the value of their companies. Instead of focusing on market share, these innovators first looked at their customers' needs and how they could profit from fulfilling them. The book considers example after example of how the profit zone works, from Disney's theme parks to Schwab's marketing and selling of mutual funds. The final chapter is a handbook that allows managers to apply the ideas to their own companies. Clearly written and immensely practical, The Profit Zone deserves a place on every manager's bookshelf.

From Library Journal
Slywotsky (Value Migration, McGraw-Hill, 1995) and Morrison, partners in a management consultancy, offer a number of insights into corporate strategy, presenting a theoretical framework that crosses a number of enterprise sectors and employs a number of specific strategies. The authors point out that market share, once the sine qua non, can no longer be equated with profitability. For the authors, profitability today comes when organizations move from a value chain based on core competencies to one based on consumer priorities. This work has a textbooklike feel; besides defining 22 specific profit models, it details how a number of successful companies from SMH (Swatch and Omega watches) to Coca-Cola and Microsoft employ strategies either singularly or in multiples. If this book has a drawback, it is that the authors were unable to capture fully the pain and hard work that came about in the development and execution of a strategy. Definitely worth considering for business collections and a good choice for general collections.?Steven Silkunas, SEPTA, Philadelphia
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Upside, Noah Shachtman
In The Profit Zone, Boston-based consultants Adrian Slywotzky and David J. Morrison deliver 22 organizational models for capturing profit. Then they reinforce their theoretical constructs with case studies of companies that are proven profit leaders. Some of their profile choices, such as Andy Grove and Bill Gates, are a tad obvious. But the authors offer some helpful insights into how corporate leaders structure their organizations for maximum profitability--especially when the authors deal with some of the lesser-known CEOs. Low-margin Swatches, for example, don't make much money for parent company SMH. But they build brand loyalty, which the company then reaps in the upper spectrum of the watch business. Overall, Slywotzky and Morrison have crafted an inventive framework for thinking about an organization's design and how to translate those thoughts into profitable realities.

Customer Reviews

Slywotzky gives clear and simple advice
Good book, especially the first three chapters. The other chapters give examples of his principles.

Keep your eye on the ball!
In the first part of the book Slywotzky and Morrison argue convincingly that the profit zone has shifted from the player with the greatest market share to the player who has the best business model. This model must be designed to meet customer needs and provide higher profitability. And, the business model must flexible enough to change as the landscape of profitability shifts.

Customer centric thinking is key to being in the profit zone. Slywotzky and Morrison explain that many upper level management types are not easily able to make the shift to customer centric thinking because of two reasons:

1. For twenty or more years of their career they were successful at focusing on improving products, increasing market share, and growing revenues. They functioned well in this world. Change to new thinking patterns is difficult.
2. Young companies focus on customers, but mature companies many times lose site of this. When companies are mature they focus more on themselves (internal budgets, resource concerns, politics and more).

Once the concepts of how to enter the profit zone is explained in detail, the book provides several examples of companies that were able to reinvent themselves and succeed.

Overall an excellent book about keeping your eye on the ball. In this case the "ball" is profits!

The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking

Instructive and Insightful Book that Every Manager Should Read
I read lots of business management books every year. This is the most insightful and informmative business managment book that I have read all year if not this entire century. Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison do an outstanding job demonstrating how management can consistently achieve profitable results, not by trying to outhink the competition, increase productivity, improving marketing strategies, or some other short term strategy, but by developing superior insight into customers' needs and wants and adapting a business strategy that stays ahead of those customers' needs and wants.

Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison did not write a book that consists of nothing more than theory. They give real-life detailed examples and instructions on how to develop a business strategy based upon a understanding of your customers' values. This book is so insightful and instructive that Slywotzky and Morrison could have sold this book with a money back guarantee promising that a company's profits will increase if managment reads this book and implements the book's instructions. Read this book and pray that your competition never finds out about it.