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In recent years, the experience curve has gone through a crisis of confidence. This is due, the author contends, to the misunderstanding and misapplication of the curve by some managers. The basic validity and usefulness of the curve remain unchallenged. This article provides a guide to using the curve properly.

The story of Kanban, the vitally important Japanese manufacturing technique, is just beginning. U.S. companies that can make use of the Kanban system will gain enormous competitive advantages.

Strategic investment theory establishes a framework for discussing the benefits of acquisitions. However, these theories do not provide automatic answers to investment questions.

This paper reports the results of more than a decade‐long research journey on how firms can go beyond competing to creating uncontested market space, or “blue oceans,” that makes the competition irrelevant.

Studies over 150 blue‐ocean creations in over 30 industries spanning more than 100 years from 1880 to 2000. Analyzes not only winning business players that created blue oceans but also their less successful competitors. Searches for convergence among the strategic moves that created blue oceans and divergence between these moves and those of less successful players caught in the red ocean of bloody competition.

Finds clear strategic patterns that united the strategic moves that created blue oceans and separated these from the strategic moves that left companies battling for incremental market share in red oceans of overcrowded markets.

This paper addresses the following key questions: How can companies create blue oceans in an opportunity‐maximizing, risk‐minimizing way? What makes the creation of blue oceans increasingly imperative? Why has the field of strategy to date paid scant attention to how to reconstruct market boundaries to open up blue oceans of uncontested market space?

This paper makes strides in filling a central void in the field of strategy. For the past 25 years the field of strategy has focused principally on how to build competitive advantages to beat the competition within established market boundaries. While important, with supply exceeding demand in more and more industries this often leads to a red ocean of bloody competition. Instead of battling rivals, companies need to go beyond this. They need to create blue oceans of uncontested market space to prosper in the future. This article gives an insight into how firms can achieve this.

The purpose of this paper is to organize the semantics jungle of marketing strategy approaches, terms and concepts into a logically coherent framework using the history of marketing thought to inform current marketing research and practice.

The paper takes the form of an intensive literature review tracing the three streams of marketing strategy terms and concepts from their roots in the literatures of early marketing management, managerial economics and corporate management to the present.

Along with marketing ideas, strategy concepts from managerial economics and from corporate management were absorbed directly into the corpus of strategic marketing thought. These three streams of research have converged into the current state of marketing strategy – an eclectic mixture of both complementary and conflicting strategic approaches, terms and concepts. By systematically following the evolutionary development of major contributions to strategic marketing thought and by redefining terms and refining concepts the various approaches to strategy can be integrated into a comprehensive conceptual framework for organizing and choosing among individual marketing strategies.

The framework offers conceptual and practical value. It provides a researcher with a consistent set of terms and concepts to build upon. The framework also provides a strategic toolkit for the marketing manager, based upon organizational and environmental conditions, to choose from among the feasible alternatives the most effective marketing strategy to achieve management's goal(s).

This paper addresses the question of when market leaders are most likely to be attacked. It does so by discussing the circumstances associated with competitors' attacks on 21 market leaders. These circumstances and the 21 competitive encounters are used to present a twelve‐point checklist which market leaders can use in answering the title question.

American industry is in the midst of a new merger boom. Recent studies, however, show that such mergers do not necessarily enhance profits, boost productivity, aid efficiency, or result in social good. Given these findings, you ought to seriously question whether a proposed merger is a sound strategic decision before acting on it.

Purpose – Libraries have been experiencing relentless change and uncertainty in their environment. The literature on corporate communications, strategic management and planning, marketing and public relations more recently, has been recommending using communications as a strategy to coherently and proactively handle and foresee change. Planning and using an overall communications strategy will bring integrity and adherence to the library's goals and direction while reducing the discomfort of change. This selected bibliography is a quick starting point for understanding the significance of an overall communication strategy and its use for managing conflicts and changes in the library's environment strategically. Design/methodology/approach – This article covers books and articles from mid‐1980s to 2004, published around the world. The sources are listed alphabetically by author and then chronologically for different sources by the same author, providing brief but useful information about the content covered for each source. Findings – This bibliography illustrates a variety of research from corporate communications, strategic planning, communications management, marketing and public relations literature that emphasize the role of communication in strategic management. Research limitations/implications – It records a comprehensive list of publications covering international perspectives as well as publications about communication strategy. Practical implications – This selected bibliography is primarily intended for librarians, library planners, managers or administrators, but is also relevant to corporate and business professionals, planners and administrators. Further, it would also be a useful resource for students, faculty and researchers of communication. Originality/value – This bibliography presents a much needed resource list for gathering insights into the strategic role of communication for organizations such as the library that are in a state of constant change.

A survey of Fortune 500 vice‐presidents of marketing and planning reveals their views of the business environment in 1995 along with their expected changes in corporate and marketing strategy. These perspectives can serve as a catalyst to other executives for thinking about future business environments as well as possible corporate responses to the shape of the future. Whether the predictions of the organizational managers we surveyed materialize or not, their views are worthy of careful scrutiny by any organization that takes strategic planning as a serious and important exercise in plotting a firm's future.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the relative profitability and growth matrix and to demonstrate its use as a competitive analysis tool.

Two well‐known drivers of value are profitability and growth. After a study of 2 × 2 matrices we applied these drivers on a relative or industry comparative basis to a 2 × 2 matrix, and then we applied that matrix to competitive analyses of two industries to assess its strategic utility.

Our findings suggest that the relative profitability and growth matrix could be a useful competitive analysis screening and communications tool.

The relative profitability and growth matrix assesses a firm's profitability and growth relative to its industry and by so doing helps to identify and classify performance in a succinct format that facilitates further analysis. After such analysis has been completed the matrix can also serve as a convenient tool to communicate the analytical findings.

The relative profitability and growth matrix is a value‐driver based 2 × 2 matrix, the strategic utility of which is demonstrated and explained in two examples.