Strategy Safari: The complete guide through the wilds of strategic management (2nd Edition) 2nd Edition

Certainly one of the best books I ever read about Strategic Management! Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel succeeded in providing a comprehensive overview about strategic management.Most text book on strategic management are focusing on a general introduction to Strategic Management, internal/external analysis, strategic options, strategy formation and the like. Mintzberg and colleagues turn this approach around and focus on "schools of thoughts" rather than the mentioned linear approach. This helped me to gain a much better overall understanding over the subject by seeing the different perspectives.Furthermore the authors do not only "blindly" depict the major concepts and thinkers on strategy, but give to each school of thoughts their own advantages and disadvantages. Certainly one might not always agree on their comments but it makes the reader think and form his/her own opinion. I guess this is an indented outcome by the authors.What I further liked is the detailed referencing to academic work. This gives the chance to dig even deeper into the topic if necessary respectively wished.Last but not least a word of caution: For practitioners who look for a practicalguide and a quick-fix to their strategic problems might be disappointed.

I'm a participant of a master programme in enterprise architecture at inno.com and this book has given me a tremendous and fast insight in the evolution of strategic thinking.I consider this a must read for everyone who wants to understand how different people look at strategic thinking over time.It is not imposing anything but is excellent in helping you to get a personal view on how to see strategy.A must have & a must read !

Other than Porter, MBA students are likely to hear Mintzberg mentioned more than any other author. It's a great book that breaks down two decades of research on strategy, categorizing them into ten schools; then gives the pros & cons of each.

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Authors Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel provide the oft-cited "The Blind Men and the Elephant" by John Godfrey Saxe as a backdrop to their discussion on the ten schools of management (Design, Planning, Positioning, Entrepreneurial, Cognitive, Learning, Power, Cultural, Environmental, and Configuration), because while at the outset they indicate that "we are the blind people and strategy formation is our elephant", since "everyone has grabbed hold of some part or other and 'railed on in utter ignorance' about the rest" because "no one has had the vision to see the entire beast", the authors end their discourse by showing that there is not necessarily one safari beast with which to contend, but multiple, although "we shall never find [the whole beast of strategy formation], never really see it all". Corresponding to each of these ten schools is a different view of the strategy process - strategy formation as a process of conception, strategy formation as a formal process, strategy formation as an analytical process, strategy formation as a visionary process, strategy formation as a mental process, strategy formation as an emergent process, strategy formation as a process of negotiation, strategy formation as a collective process, strategy formation as a reactive process, and strategy formation as a process of transformation. The chapter introductions to each of the schools provide superb historical information, and the last chapter discusses the evolution of the the ten schools and provides an excellent bulleted summary table that whimsically assigns different beasts to each school as well as easy-to-remember homilies such as "take us to your leader" for The Entrepreneurial School, "I'll see it when I believe it" for The Cognitive School, and "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" for The Learning School. In the opinion of this reviewer, the chapters on these three schools are also the best, even though the authors indicate that The Cognitive School is "characterized more by its potential than by its contribution. The central idea is valid - that the strategy-formation process is also fundamentally one of cognition, particularly in the attainment of strategies as concepts. But strategic management, in practice if not in theory, has yet to gain sufficiently from cognitive psychology. Or perhaps more accurately, cognitive psychology has yet to address adequately the questions of prime interest to strategic management, especially how concepts form in the mind of a strategist". The authors draw from many research sources (some readers may be interested in knowing that the bibliography is 18 pages long), including some of their past works, most notably Mintzberg, and their liberal use of well-placed sidebars and diagrams in the material is extremely effective in bringing these together. Their use of humor is also well received by this reviewer, especially when placed in the midst of some of the rather lengthy discussions that some readers new to his subject matter might otherwise receive as dry. For example, the chapter on The Design School starts with a quote by an anonymous manager about a Harvard MBA: "The damn guy just sits there waiting for a case study." This reviewer completely agrees that, in the words of the authors, this book makes sense of a field that often seems to make no sense. Well recommended to anyone in business, especially those struggling through the vast, sometimes confusing terrain of strategic management.

My appreciation of this book is beyond words. The book title states that it's "Your complete guide..." which I cant agree more. The elaborations, the short cases, the cartoons and the graphs are all excellent. IMHO, it's a must for any senior managers, consultants and academics (so their students dont have to go through the same torture I got from attending "Corporate Strategy" in my MBA studies, though the professors/lectures may want to keep this brilliant shortcut to themselves. In short, highly recommended!

Too much personal infliction in the writings.

Extremely frustrated that this 2nd edition is not available on Kindle! Amazon please apply some of your market power to convince this publisher to do the right thing and make 2nd edition available electronically. Current Kindle version is copyright 1998 - pathetic.