Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market Without Abandoning Your Roots

by Chris Zook

All companies must grow to survive--but only one in five growth strategies succeeds. In Profit from the Core, strategy expert Chris Zook revealed how to grow profitably by focusing on and achieving full potential in the core business. But what happens when your core business provides insufficient new growth or even hits the wall? In Beyond the Core, Zook outlines an expansion strategy based on putting together combinations of adjacency moves into areas away from, but related to, the core business, such as new product lines or new channels of distribution. These sequences of moves carry less risk than diversification, yet they can create enormous competitive advantage, because they stem directly from what the company already knows and does best. Based on extensive research on the growth patterns of thousands of companies worldwide, including CEO interviews with 25 top performers in adjacency growth, Beyond the Core 1) identifies the adjacency pattern that most dramatically increases the odds of success: "relentless repeatability;" 2) offers a systematic approach for choosing among a range of possible adjacency moves; and 3) shows how to time adjacency moves during a variety of typical business situations. Beyond the Core shows how to find and leverage the best avenues for growth--without damaging the heart of the firm.

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 2003

About the author

Chris Zook is a business writer and partner at Bain & Company, leading its Global Strategy Practice.

Reviews

[Jozef]

Interessant onderzoek over hoe je aan innovatie moet doen.
Kortweg stelt het boek dat je aandacht moet hebben voor je kernactiviteiten en naar innovatie moet zoeken in de nabijheid van je kernactiviteiten. Hoe verder ervan, hoe groter het risico. Het geeft ook enkele methodes aan om dit op een systematische manier te onderzoeken en zo tot de beste beslissingen te komen.

[Todd]

This book was included in my book: The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. www.100bestbiz.com

[Jay]

Time 100

[Evan]

Was pleased with this book. I thought it stuck well to its theme, which I took to be that adjacency moves are necessary but should be made cautiously. The book encouraged first reviewing and evaluating the core business/market and only after having a strong grasp of this core thoroughly evaluating adjacency moves.
The principles were good. I didn’t always get as much out of the examples, but I believe the research and the interviews served well in developing and refining the thesis.

[Mary Kelly]

The basic premise is sound, (keep it simple, find what you do best and stick to it) but the book itself has a strong feeling of "Monday morning quarterback" and judging decisions made in a moment by analysis after the fact.

[Rusydina]

Good

[Adam Ruff]

Better than Profit from the Core for me.

[707 unknown]

Tựa Việt: Chiến lược mở rộng kinh doanh từ cốt lõi

[Lamec Mariita]

An Outstanding Growth Guide for Global Business Leaders. It's a relatively quick read that is focused, insightful and well structured. The book takes a truly global perspective with examples from Europe, Asia and Latin America which is very helpful in international business strategy. The theories in the book are supported by an enormous amount of financial, competitive and market research and by many CEO interviews and studies by Bain & Company. The book will mainly be helpful to those who are thinking about making unrelated acquisitions.

[Christian]

War für mich Allgemeinwissen und zu offensichtlich.

[Lori Grant]

A must-read book on strategic frameworks for knowledge workers and entrepreneurs.