Editorial Review:
Strategy making is considered the high point of managerial activity. But bombarded by fads and fixes, most managers have been groping blindly to get their arms around the proverbial elephant. Now Henry Mintzberg, author of the award-winning The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, has teamed up with Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampel to create a powerful antidote: a comprehensive and illuminating -- as well as colorful -- tour through the fields of strategic management. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel have shaped each of ten different approaches into a coherent school of strategy formation. In the process, the authors clarify the enormous amount of confusion that exists. The result is a tour de force: a brilliant, penetrating primer on business strategy that is, at the same time, immensely readable and fun. The authors provide a thorough critique of the contributions and limitations of each school -- from the design, planning, positioning, entrepreneurial, and cognitive schools to the learning, power, cultural, environmental, and configurational schools -- culminating in how they might combine to reveal that elephant. Unique, insightful, and essential, Strategy Safari is the indispensable guide for the creative manager.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Brilliant book on strategic management perspectives  2008-11-07
Mintzerbg's sharpness and power of synthesis brilliantly summarizes the most divergent views in the strategic management field. The book sheds light on the different assumptions, strengths and weaknesses of each school, allowing the reader to appreciate the overall complexity of the subject and the contribution of each school to the understanding of the topic.
The book is written in a clear and straightforward style. The 'safari' metaphor, representing our journey into the field while the different 'animals' represent the different schools, is well articulated, illustrative and humorous, which makes the reading very easy.
Each statement or conclusion is well referenced and the reference literature is impressive. This book is a clear testimony that academic rigour on one side and the use of methaphors, sketches and even some humor on the other are perfectly compatible.
Great overview book on strategic management  2008-09-15
Book is required for a course I'm taking. It is a very easy ready and provides a fantastic overview of the many thoughts w/r to strategic management. The authors break the field into ten distinct "schools" which provides a nice way to compare and contrast the plethora of concepts coming out of academia over the years.
Mintzberg v. Porter, et.al. but especially Porter 2007-12-27
For a summary of the book, I'd recommend Mr. Gerard Kroese's review elsewhere on this page. It is fair and accurate. What I find most entertaining about this work is the authors' (Mintzberg's mostly) masterful deconstruction of Professor Porter's positioning models. Mintzberg has spent the past 25 years railing against them, seeing them as altogether static sieves through which reality is filtered. An effective strategy, Mintzberg argued in "Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning" is one that interacts with and engages its environment. I'd put myself in the "environmental school" as Mintzberg characterizes that perspective in this book.
Most of all, this book is well-written, as is most of Mintzberg's work, and is filled with such whimsy as a serious book strategic management can muster.
Strategy review 2007-02-17
The ease of doing business and the product is excellent. I am very happy and will certainly order again.
Strategy Safari for management Student 2007-02-08
Actually, the book quite different what I expected. It shows different ways for current managers, or future managers about history of strategy, even about your life.
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