Breakpoints

Many companies have fallen, not because they ignored their customers or lacked superior management skills, but because business conditions shifted beneath them. In an environment of fluctuating markets, proliferating technologies, and changing political frontiers, the management challenge is to cope with breakpoints, or sudden shifts in the rules of the game. Paul Strebel provides a framework for dealing with radical business change. Strebel shows that breakpoints may be as enterprising as Drexel Burnham Lambert's promotion of the junk bond market - or as dramatic as its collapse. They may result from changes in industry conditions such as the emergence of new technologies or price wars. When business conditions shift, the formula for success inevitably changes. This book presents a way of managing different types of radical business change. Strebel describes a simple framework that allows managers to adapt to diverse conditions, especially those that lead to breakpoints. He suggests how to develop radical change scenarios that will help managers better anticipate or catch up with discontinuities.
Further, Strebel reveals what managers must do to create competitive discontinuities - and become true market leaders.