Review
Sørensen and Carroll have developed an incredibly powerful yet simple way to build a compelling corporate strategy. After reading the book you’ll wonder why everyone doesn’t do it this way. -- Andy Rachleff, cofounder, CEO, and executive chairman, Wealthfront; previously cofounder and senior partner, Benchmark Capital
This is simply one of the best methods I’ve come across for how to devise, develop, and deploy corporate strategy. It is a must-read for every executive responsible for or frustrated by their own company’s strategy. This book taught me not only how to pressure-test our strategy but also how to constantly rewrite it-making us stronger, over and over again. -- David Rogier, CEO and founder, MasterClass
Making Great Strategy is about how managers should make strategy. Hindsight is always 20/20, but, while in the middle of figuring out what to do and what not to do, it is always important to ‘think about how we think.’ This book helps you do that. -- Michael A. Cusumano, SMR Distinguished Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and coauthor of Strategy Rules and The Business of Platforms
More than ever, we need tools to argue in reasonable and robust ways and to recognize and cultivate the wisdom of a group of people unified by a common vision and moving in the same strategic direction. This book is a set of interlocking tools that creates systems and clarity, reveals biases, ensures equity in decision making, and brings people together to achieve a common goal-a viable and robust strategy. This is not a checklist but a GPS for leaders and teams to create their own roadmaps to the future. -- Gail Crider, president and chief executive officer, National Arts Strategies
Many books have been written about strategy, but few have fundamentally changed the way we think about the topic. Making Great Strategy does exactly this. By leveraging the discipline of critical analytical thinking, pioneered at Stanford's business school, this book propels us beyond generating great strategy and toward the ongoing evaluation and revision of it. Both are essential elements to operating in a dynamic world. -- Michael Arena, vice president of talent and development at Amazon Web Services and author of Adaptive Space
Strategic success, Stanford professors Jesper Sørensen and Glenn Carroll write, comes from the ability to ‘step back, think critically, and see the big picture,’ and in this book, they show you exactly how to unfold this deceptively simple approach to maximum advantage. I am lucky enough to have sat in Sørensen’s classroom, and it is his voice that I hear in my head when I seek to help others understand that strategy isn’t an abstract idea but is rather about articulating a logical argument and unfolding its consequences. Happily, Making Great Strategy means that many more will now get to share this powerful approach and put it to good use. -- Genevieve Bell, distinguished professor and director of the 3A Institute, Australian National University, and senior fellow, Intel Corporation
Making Great Strategy cogently explains why strategy formulation requires data gathering, rigor, and hard-headed debate, no matter the strategic framework one might employ. The authors explain how making strategy this way will help blow of