Praise for Let Go To Grow

"Over the next ten years large companies will be hit with a wide array of harrowing new business challenges—commoditization being at the top of that list.

Let Go To Grow elegantly outlines the critical new innovation, standardization, and globalization strategies that corporations can use to hurdle these obstacles and thrive in the coming years."

—George F. Colony, CEO, Forrester Research, Inc.

"This is a very important book for CEOs and top executives who are facing brutal, global competitive pressures, which is probably a majority. Let Go To Grow describes a strategy that will allow you as a business leader to do what you do best, while sidestepping the commoditization that's driving down profit margins in so many businesses. This book reflects not only what IBM is thinking, but also what other companies ranging from Dell to FedEx to Wal-Mart are doing to win in extremely competitive markets. Read this book for practical real-world insights, not for any academic theories."

—William J. Holstein, Editor-in-Chief, Chief Executive magazine

"Let Go To Grow is a must-read for executives who are trying to use strategy and management practices to drive innovation and productivity gains. It puts concepts like componentization, outsourcing, and off-shoring in a much more strategic context than anything else I've read. The book clearly shows how winning companies have gone from optimizing value chains to managing global "value webs" for competitive advantage. The argument is enhanced significantly by specific practical case examples featuring leading companies like Dell, eBay, GE, Procter & Gamble, and Toyota."

—Tony Friscia, President and CEO, AMR Research

"Sanford and Taylor carefully analyze the global marketplace and offer a progressive new strategy for transforming an underperforming business...A pioneering blueprint for the 21st-century business."

—Kirkus Reports

Drive sustained growth!

—Use on demand techniques to gain unprecedented speed, flexibility, and adaptability

—Construct dynamic "value webs" that leverage innovation from any source

Deregulation, globalization, and the Internet are driving rampant commoditization in virtually every industry. To escape that trap and grow profitably, you must "let go" of traditional control mechanisms. In their place, you must build new models, relationships, and platforms that capture and deliver value from multiple sources, inside and outside the enterprise.

In Let Go To Grow, IBM senior executive Linda Sanford and long-time entrepreneur Dave Taylor show exactly how to do that.

Sanford and Taylor systematically review the On Demand Business processes, people strategies, technology shifts, governance practices, and leadership vision you'll need to maximize profitability in tomorrow's business environment. They introduce powerful new techniques for balancing and measuring three key drivers of top-line growth: productivity, collaboration, and innovation.

You'll discover how to gain unprecedented flexibility by constructing your business around components, platforms, and standardized interfaces. The authors demonstrate how to expand your growth space, liberate your cost structures, and build profits—not just revenues. Drawing on the experiences of companies ranging from GE to eBay, Toyota to IBM, this book focuses on practical implementation, offering a proven, start-to-finish approach for moving from vision to results.

• Create a virtuous cycle of growth.
  Discover how great companies are escaping commoditization and the vagaries of economic cycles.

• Improve, balance, and measure the key drivers of top-line growth.
  Use on demand techniques to supercharge productivity, collaboration, and innovation.

• Drive unprecedented agility with proven on demand strategies.
  "Open up" your firm: source and coordinate capabilities dynamically, on-the-fly.

• Build flexible "value webs" that liberate your cost structures.
  Master powerful new ways to refocus precious resources on growth.

• "Componentize" your business functions, processes, and services.
  Simplify the creation of any new business configuration, from supply chain management to customer service.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 9 Ratings

Business platforms - 2009-01-07
Reviewer Rating:
The authors clearly articulate the problem, but their solution is less plausible. Having each enterprise develop its own platform is not practical, does not work and cannot scale beyond tier one partners.
Nonetheless it is an excellent examination of the CEO's dilemma "how do I optimise the enterprise's efficiency while maximising the enterprise's flexibility in the market place.

Another Worthwhile Growth Data Point - 2008-07-22
Reviewer Rating:
There are far too few books on growing (as opposed to starting) a business. And this book is a slow read. Like another reviewer mentioned, it is somewhat repetitive, maybe a little disorganized. Business people like to read and apply quickly. But the book provokes the business thought process which is always good.

The gist is that businesses are all interlocking. Your business receives and gives value. So far, so good. However, the reason that many businesses choose to do many things in-house is because there's a major trade-off: risk for profit.

Ex. We're a small B2B, communicating mostly online. We outsourced our phones to an answering service. It was a disaster. Dropped calls, long wait times, rudeness, garbled messages, rising prices, etc. And this was an agency approved by the related association.

Maybe a larger organization has enough resources(people, money, attorneys, etc.) to control an outsourced relationship. But this approach isn't for all businesses. And the book doesn't really address how to manage an outsourced relationships. Maybe that's the sequel.

Small businesses might get more value out of the sections that refer to providing value to others.

Let Go to Grow - 2007-02-08
Reviewer Rating:
The author focuses on the difficulty that groups have accepting change. Her premise that letting go of old ways is a requirement for accepting new ways is spot on. I particularly appreciated that practical solutions that were outlined for dealing with recalcitrance of stakeholders. I found the book easy to read with little jargon and the writing style was light.

Some interesting ideas, but too repetitive - 2006-07-16
Reviewer Rating:
This book contains certainly some interesting ideas, provides nice examples of business that are transforming and offers some interesting facts (like the fact that employment in Chinese manufacturing is declining more rapidly than in the US!)

However the book (luckily only 200 pages) keeps on repeating itself from the beginning to the end of the book. The authors keep on explaining and repeating the same ideas in almost every chapter. The same examples (UPS, IBM, GE, e-Bay, P&G, Fedex, Amazon, Li & Fung) are used and reused in almost every chapter.

An outstanding book for leaders - 2006-03-10
Reviewer Rating:
This business book shows the reader how to look at their business issues and gain an advantage over their competitors by embracing IBM's On Demand strategy. It encapsulates some of IBM's best thinking on how companies can position themselves for growth in today's highly competitive marketplace.

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Business

Sub-Categories:
Business > Economics