Strategy Rules

The authors of the bestselling Competing on Internet Time (a Business Week top 10 book) analyze the strategies, principles, and skills of three of the most successful and influential figures in business—Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs—offering lessons for all managers and entrepreneurs on leadership, strategy and execution.

In less than a decade, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Andy Grove founded three companies that would define the world of technology and transform our lives. At their peaks, Microsoft, Apple, and Intel were collectively worth some $1.5 trillion. Strategy Rules examines these three individuals collectively for the first time—their successes and failures, commonalities and differences—revealing the business strategies and practices they pioneered while building their firms.

David B. Yoffie and Michael A. Cusumano have studied these three leaders and their companies for more than thirty years, while teaching business strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship at Harvard and MIT. In this enlightening guide, they show how Gates, Grove, and Jobs approached strategy and execution in remarkably similar ways—yet markedly differently from their erstwhile competitors—keeping their focus on five strategic rules.

Strategy Rules brings together the best practices in strategic management and high-tech entrepreneurship from three path-breaking entrepreneurs who emerged as CEOs of huge global companies. Their approaches to formulating strategy and building organizations offer unique insights for start-up executives as well as the heads of modern multinationals.

This essential guide for modern leaders breaks down their playbook into five core principles:

Strategic Thinking: Learn to ‘look forward and reason back,’ the core mindset Gates, Grove, and Jobs used to anticipate customer needs, outmaneuver competitors, and shape the future. Platform and Ecosystem Strategy: Discover why building platforms and ecosystems—not just products—was the key to the long-term dominance of Microsoft, Apple, and Intel. Strategy and Execution: Bridge the gap between a brilliant idea and flawless execution with lessons from three CEOs who mastered both sides of the equation. In-Depth Case Studies: Go inside the iconic decisions and critical inflection points at Microsoft, Apple, and Intel, drawn from more than thirty years of research by Harvard and MIT professors. Five Actionable Rules: A clear framework that distills the complex careers of three industry titans into repeatable principles for entrepreneurs, managers, and CEOs at any stage.