Kindle
$20.89
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Hardcover
$21.99
Audio CD
$32.99
Buy new:
-37% $21.99
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 7 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
$21.99 with 37 percent savings
List Price: $35.00

The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Except for books, Amazon will display a List Price if the product was purchased by customers on Amazon or offered by other retailers at or above the List Price in at least the past 90 days. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price.
Learn more
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 7 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Friday, May 3. Order within 13 hrs
Only 4 left in stock - order soon.
$$21.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$21.99
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
$7.74
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
Reading copy. Have signs of wear and previous use (Scuffs, library copy, highlighting, writing and underlining). This is an ex-library book, stickers and markings accordingly. Reading copy. Have signs of wear and previous use (Scuffs, library copy, highlighting, writing and underlining). This is an ex-library book, stickers and markings accordingly. See less
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 7 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 13 hrs
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$21.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$21.99
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Todd Zenger
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Beyond Competitive Advantage: How to Solve the Puzzle of Sustaining Growth While Creating Value Hardcover – June 14, 2016

by Todd Zenger (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 49 ratings
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$21.99","priceAmount":21.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"21","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"sMqmnL9Rzhz%2Bl807clO%2BXVEymntAFQAx%2BufUZfh9kCjeU%2FCv5wHMdzQtYK%2FLoFEZ94%2FGuKql9x9oifLUD4J1B3jeKs9SSi5X5Vnb1gu9iAIyYmQU%2FkoZc94wWVpJbmTnMKvk%2BHroCcLYyLpN27utjg%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$7.74","priceAmount":7.74,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"7","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"74","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"sMqmnL9Rzhz%2Bl807clO%2BXVEymntAFQAxkQ5L2ztW5X8NsE7YDLpPXCkEqH8YZYsLgqx9djTLOl3eq%2FfXfQFY5jLPD1LnBVD40gYFWdl%2FhJedKW5yfmWSkK%2FfYev8H0lez4V1DgF%2FQf%2F9WQVRcnDEzNXdTy9gnH1CvlqVlcNxYgjdSM4ODxEgXBs7H1sW9bpV","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

A competitive advantage just isn't enough.

Your company is turning in regular profits every year, and its market share is only getting bigger. Competitors can’t touch you. So why is your stock price so sluggish? The answer is as simple as it is cruel: investors aren’t interested in history, and they already know you’re profitable and competitive—that knowledge is baked into your stock price.

The hard reality is that a competitive advantage just isn’t enough. Investors want companies to surprise them with unexpected value, which means that you can outperform market expectations only if you as a leader know how to find, create, and deliver a series of multiple competitive advantages.

This is why a corporate theory is so important. A good corporate theory provides a compass for those at the strategic helm, guiding their decisions about what assets and activities to pursue, what investments to make, and what strategies to adopt. Behind every long-term corporate success story lies a basic theory about how that company creates value.

In Beyond Competitive Advantage, strategy professor Todd Zenger describes what makes a great corporate theory and helps readers understand the many tensions and trade-offs they’ll face as they apply the theory to meet the challenge of market expectations.

Based on years of research and analysis, Beyond Competitive Advantage provides managers and executives with a framework for both sustaining value and creating growth.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harvard Business Review Press
  4. Publication date
    June 14, 2016
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.9 x 9.3 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1633690008
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1633690004
  8. See all details
Next page
The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now

Frequently bought together

Beyond Competitive Advantage: How to Solve the Puzzle of Sustaining Growth While Creating Value
$21.99
Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 7
Only 4 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
$18.39
Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 7
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists
$16.99
Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 7
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Zenger’s important new study argues that today’s successful strategist needs to develop a ‘corporate theory of value creation’ that can provide ongoing guidance in making more coherent decisions.” — Forbes

“The book illuminates these ideas in depth, looking at various aspects of strategy your firm might encounter, including acquisitions and building relationships with partners. Zenger offers enough examples to provide clarity about how to apply this advancement to your firm’s competitive advantage.” — The Globe & Mail

“Beyond Competitive Advantage will make you reconsider creating and sustaining corporate value as well as your role in the process.” — Strategic Finance Magazine

“Drawing from companies that have done this successfully, such as Disney, Zenger provides ample reasons for a company to pursue its own unique corporate theory.” — TD magazine (Association for Talent Development)

ADVANCE PRAISE for Beyond Competitive Advantage:

Ryan Smith, founder and CEO, Qualtrics—
“Those of us who lead rapidly growing businesses know there is a lot more to a successful company than its sources of competitive advantage. Todd Zenger’s concept of a corporate theory provides us with that 'more.' He shows us how to go beyond short-term strategy in order to build businesses that make a big impact and endure. Beyond Competitive Advantage will help all business leaders ask smarter questions about the big challenges they face.”

Jim Turley, retired Chairman and CEO, Ernst & Young—
“Todd Zenger provides business leaders with a robust framework for making wiser decisions about where to play and how to win. And his theory of corporate advantage offers the most convincing explanation I’ve heard about what sets great companies apart from good ones.”

Jan Rivkin, Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School—
“How can you create value again and again in an uncertain world? You need a theory that guides you toward bets that your firm is uniquely qualified to win. Todd Zenger mixes practical examples with the latest scholarship to show how a great corporate theory can help you decide what markets to pursue, which assets to assemble, and how to organize and lead.”

Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School—
“Todd Zenger tackles a classic problem: How does a large corporation create sustained value for its shareholders? Built on decades of careful academic study, Beyond Competitive Advantage is full of surprising and important insights about how some companies are able to beat the odds by developing a clear and distinct point of view.”

Gregory Goff, CEO, Tesoro Corporation—
“Todd Zenger’s concept of the corporate theory is a great guide for developing and changing strategies over time and provides a compelling explanation of why some companies consistently turn in superior performance. As a CEO, I am constantly challenged to create value, and Todd’s insights are invaluable.”

About the Author

Todd Zenger is the N. Eldon Tanner Chair in Strategy and Strategic Leadership at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah and holds the University of Utah designation as a Presidential Professor. Zenger is a global expert on topics of corporate strategy, strategic leadership, and organization design. He has lectured widely on these topics to academic audiences at most of the world’s leading business schools, and his work has been broadly published in the leading academic journals in management and strategy.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard Business Review Press (June 14, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1633690008
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1633690004
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.9 x 9.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 49 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Todd Zenger

Todd Zenger

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Todd Zenger is the N. Eldon Tanner Chair in Strategy and Strategic Leadership at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah and holds the University of Utah designation as a Presidential Professor. Zenger is a global expert on topics of corporate strategy, strategic leadership, and organization design. He has lectured widely on these topics to academic audiences at most of the world’s leading business schools, and his work has been broadly published in the leading academic journals in management and strategy.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
49 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

FromPhilly
5.0 out of 5 stars Don't experiment with a business idea before you have a corporate hypothesis
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2016
Verified Purchase
The best part of the book comes at the end where it exposes the danger of Lean Methodologies, of pivoting and experimenting without first thinking. The author suggests first having a corporate hypothesis before going out and experimenting. It sounds logical, but so many startups fail to do so today... to properly define the problem they're solving, to understand who else has tried and why they failed / how the solutions were suboptimal. Why? The business culture of today prioritizes action over thinking. We feel more valuable and important fighting fires than we do researching and thinking. So we act without much thought.

Overall a great read. The author has many lessons learned from case studies along with frameworks to help develop a corporate hypothesis. Complements Good Strategy / Bad Strategy well.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A Strategy for Strategies
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2016
Verified Purchase
This book begins by giving an overview of the history, study, and application of corporate strategy. Todd then makes the case that while these strategies have worked, they in no way correlate to long term corporate success.

The book then outlines what makes up a successful corporate theory - a strategy for strategies. This guides how companies can properly allocate the limitless combinations of assets, resources, and activities they have to juggle in order to create value.

Todd explains up front that this isn't a guide to building your corporate theory, it's meant to give you the tools to know whether your corporate theory is going to help you drive long term value.

If you're interested in expanding your knowledge of business strategy, you have to pick up this book.
Helpful
 Report
Cheryl C
5.0 out of 5 stars Creating untapped value and finding the right strategic position. Outstanding book.
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2016
Verified Purchase
Not certain which position to take for your firm next? Feeling the burning desire to grow, but every time your firm has tried in the past, the effort derailed? These common pain points for executives are solved in an easy to digest format, brilliantly laid out by Dr. Zenger. The frameworks presented in this book will challenge you to think in ways beyond what you normally would and create value where it there was previously believed to be none.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read Strategy Book
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2016
Verified Purchase
This book has a lot of great concepts about the strategy and value creation. The book is well written, easy to understand and follow, and contains a lot of examples of good and bad strategy companies. You will not think the same about the strategy after reading the book. Anyone interested in strategy, developing or starting a business must read this book.
Helpful
 Report
Augustus
5.0 out of 5 stars It goes beyond business strategy theory with fresh insights to modern day challenges.
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2017
Verified Purchase
The title summarizes the promise of this book - it goes beyond just dry strategy theory and offers modern day principles by which guide your business decisions.
Helpful
 Report
Anthony Martus
5.0 out of 5 stars Helps you think differently
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2018
Verified Purchase
Helped me rethink how I approached problems with more cross-sight insight and foresight.
Helpful
 Report
Pablo De Vescovi
5.0 out of 5 stars Todd Zenger uses simplicity to explain in operational terms very useful, ready to use concepts
Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2016
Verified Purchase
Normally high-quality ideas have low acceptance. Not in this case. Todd Zenger uses simplicity to explain in operational terms very useful, ready to use concepts.
Helpful
 Report
investingbythebooks
3.0 out of 5 stars Set up a guiding beacon
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2018
In his corporate strategy book Beyond Competitive Advantage the University of Utah business professor Todd Zenger, specialized in so called organizational design, presents a framework for companies on how to create shareholder value. The thesis is that companies too often use faulty or outdated structures to guide them in this pursuit and they should instead formulate and follow something the author calls a Corporate Theory of Value Creation. Although I don’t fully agree with all the preconditions that Zenger sets up the solutions he proposes are still largely correct.

The book is structured in three parts and seven chapters. Part one spanning the first 100 pages introduces and describes the author’s Corporate Theory and why it is needed. The other parts and the remaining 80 pages are mainly concerned with how companies – with their Corporate Theory at hand – should through organizational design, strategic focus, asset allocation, investment choices, acquisitions and divestments etc. link together the assets of a company, in a broad sense, to create value. “The leader’s task in a dynamic design is to identify and select the proper sequence of programs, initiatives or structures.”

However, to take one step back, Zenger starts by claiming that companies are too stuck in an antiquated view of strategy as formulated by Michael Porter in his classic Competitive Advantage - hence, the name of this book. What we are moving beyond is not the need to have competitive advantages as such but an old formulation of what corporate strategy to use. Porter’s approach to strategy is that a company should position itself in a valuable market niche where it through some means can have a competitive advantage and then work to fortify its moats in this market segment.

Now, the purpose of a corporation is to create shareholder value and in Zenger’s view this positioning type of strategy framework is too static to be able to create the continuous growth in value that shareholders demand. Instead the company should take a more adaptive and fluid trial-and-error approach. But without a beacon to guide these trials they risk becoming a value destroying random walk. Enter the author’s Corporate Theory of Value Creation defined as “a logic that managers repeatedly use to identify from among a vast array of possible asset, activity, and resource combinations those complementary bundles that are likely to be value crating for the firm.”

The theory that must be unique for the specific company can for example relate to an advantage in solving a set of customer problems, in exploiting a set of assets, a privileged position in gaining synergies from M&A etc. The observant reader could object that this doesn’t sound much different from the means that Porter would list in gaining a competitive advantage and they would be correct in this. However, Zenger’s Corporate Theory must also give a view on future development, on synergies between corporate activities and an insight on which assets that fit the company and by all this function as a tool to take the company forward into the future. It is a type of fact-based belief on how the company can create value that over time will help the management prioritize.

I agree on the need of a beacon and the book is not bad but it is quite lightweight, a tad ivory tower academic and there is a lot I don’t agree with. First, I don’t think companies are at all as trapped in Porter’s models that Zenger portrays. Secondly, while I agree on the corporate purpose of creating shareholder value it is a fundamental mistake to equalize this with the current share price. Further, the author advocates a corporate design oscillating between centralization and decentralization to over time optimize the combination of efficiency and innovation. I think there is an obvious risk that a firm by this never gets the compounding momentum that is needed for large-scale success.

The author in my view gives the right prescription but I don’t fully agree with all of the analysis done beforehand.

This is a review by investingbythebooks.com
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Nick A Shepherd
5.0 out of 5 stars Great strategy book
Reviewed in Canada on December 12, 2016
Verified Purchase
This turned out to be a great book although the title didn't do justice to the content which provides a great link between overall organizational strategy, unique competitive capability and the holistic thinking necessary to "steer" today's complex organizations. For anyone interested in the survival of an organization in a continually changing market place this book will be helpful. It specifically appealed to me as it brings together many of the issues around "non financial" aspects of an organizations resources that are core to survival. In this way it supplies a great underpinning and linkage with integrated reporting but more importantly integrated thinking. It also addresses such complex issues as "make - buy" decsions.
One person found this helpful
 Report