Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs

Between 1968 and 1976, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs launched three companies that would define the world of high technology, create more than a trillion dollars in value, and transform our lives. How did they realize these incredible achievements? Strategy Rules examines these three individuals collectively for the first time?their successes and failures, comonalities and differences?revealing the business strategies and practices they pioneered while building their firms.

Eminent business professors David Yoffie and Michael Cusumano have studied these three leaders and their companies for nearly thirty years, while teaching business strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management. In this enlightening guide, they show how Gates, Grove, and Jobs became masters of strategy. As CEOs, each approached strategy and execution in remarkably similar ways?yet markedly differently from their erstwhile competitors?keeping their focus on five rules:

• Look Forward, Reason Back: They determined where they want their companies to be in the future and could "reason back" to identify the moves that would take them there.

• Make Big Bets, Without Betting the Company: All three men made enormous strategic bets but rarely took gambles that put the financial viability of their companies at undue risk.

• Build Platforms and Ecosystems: Technology leaders have to create industry platforms that enable other firms to create complementary products and services that make the platforms increasingly valuable.

• Exploit Leverage and Power: Gates, Grove, and Jobs often turned opponents' strengths into weaknesses and used enormous resources (once they had them) to dominate competitors.

• Shape the Company around Your Personal Anchor: From Gates' understanding of software to Grove's devotion to process discipline and Jobs' obsession with design, all three built their companies around their personal strengths while compensating for their weaknesses.

Strategy Rules brings together the best practices in strategic management and high-tech entrepreneurship, providing unique insights for start-up executives as well as the heads of modern multinationals.