Country & Industry Surveys
//surveys.ft.com/
The Financial Times (FT) publishes about 240 surveys a year and makes them available on their site. These are overview surveys written by FT reporters, not pages and pages of statistics. For example, click on “Food Processing Industry” and you’ll see FT stories on the food and drink industry, consolidation trends, drink brands, organic and functional foods, and related articles on franchising and wine. A PDF of all surveys published since 1994 is available.
Book:
Strategy is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company’s Future
By Robert A. Burgelman
The Free Press, 2001
The unique collaboration between Intel Chairman Andy Grove and Stanford Professor Robert Burgelman took off twelve years ago. Why, Grove wondered, did Stanford Business School insist on teaching hypothetical cases about the semiconductor industry when his company was right there? Burgelman, a specialist in strategic change, seized the invitation to conduct research at Intel, and soon he and Grove were co-teaching a Stanford course on strategic management. This book examines this decade-plus period, but don’t expect a lighthearted romp.
Strategy is Destiny is a serious study of strategic thinking taking hold and why it did so at Intel. It helps to know your DRAMs from your SRAMs, but the debates and decisions that are described here should be beneficial for any large organization coping with change.
