By: Strategy is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company's Future By Robert A. Burgelman Free Press, February 2002 464 pages, $32.50
Most strategy books look at numerous companies and trends and then try to distill what has been learned into a general approach. Stanford Business School Professor Burgelman takes the opposite tack: Given unprecedented access to Intel, he draws generalizations about how all businesses should be run after studying the company in depth for a dozen years. While the writing is dense, and there is far more detail than anyone could want, some of Burgelman's conclusions - that strategy can be used to impose order, for instance, and that firms need to capitalize on their core strengths and search out new opportunities simultaneously - should resonate with senior managers.
