The book's key conclusions will be very reassuring to those who are not inclined to look very far away from where they are today. The book is "a call back to the basics." "The better performing of your business units are likely to be those operating the furthest below their full potential." Many managements will use strengths in core businesses to move into new areas . . . and that's viewed as a mistake.

As you can see, the apparent meaning of the words makes little surface sense in situations where there is little choice but to move on. The book suggests that buggy whip manufacturer should narrow focus to grow faster, perhaps by just focusing on one type of buggy whip. In Beyond the Core, a more recent book, the author seems to shift his view on this point.

The problem just described relates to a slippery concept of what your core is. You are to consider your most:

- potentially profitable, franchise customers (what does that mean?)

- differentiated and strategic capabilities

- critical product offering (what if you offer services?)

- important channels (what if you don't sell through channels?)

- other critical strategic advantages {such as?).

Then, you have a lot of questions to answer about these areas, and then you will know what your core is. It was opaque to me. But I do know from reading the book that Enterprise Rent-a-Car's core is renting to people with car insurance after accidents.

The problem is then described through a metaphor to the fact that Alexander the Great's empire did not last under one person after he died. I'm not quite sure why that metaphor applies. Alexander the Great got wonderful results from his empire for almost all of the time while he was alive. That seems like a success example. Isn't that like General Electric under Jack Welch? No one describes General Electric as having been a big failure for those 20 years.

Then we get into a discussion of industry turbulence. The authors cite Arie de Geus (The Living Company) as saying that companies will have to redefine their core quite often. Charles Schwab says you have to do it in their business every year. But, there wasn't much here to tell me how to redefine my core (if I knew what it was).

If you are like me, you're more confused now. Southwest Airlines seems to be doing about the same things now that made it successful for the last 30 years now. Why doesn't it have to redefine its core? Isn't the airline industry turbulent? Dell Computer has been redefining its core like crazy (adding servers and storage for the same corporate customers), operates its business very effectively, and is often has a terrible time while making the changes.

What I suspect is happening in this book is that the authors got too hung up on the idea that success has to be the combination of high revenue growth, high profit growth, and high stock price growth. That pretty much focuses you into newer, technology businesses.

But what if you just ran your business a lot better than your competitors? Isn't that success? Those cases are excluded here. I guess those companies didn't narrow their focus enough to grow rapidly. Shame on Nucor! I thought they were successful.

The main value of this book would be for arguing against a large, bet-the-company unrelated acquisition into a weak business. If your company or business isn't overly distracted by running off in all sorts of different directions, I suggest you skip this book.

After you finish reading the book (or the review, if you do skip the book), I suggest that you think about places where historical statistics can be very misleading. Take the level of the NASDAQ. Is it declining now or is it pausing in a tremendous bull market? You can use historical data to make either point.

Be cautious when people tell you what to do based on best fitting the most recent experience. What connection does that history have to the future?

Do you believe that if a coin comes up heads six times in a row (and is a fair coin), that it is more likely to come up heads or tails this time? If you believe that, you'll love this book!

Make profits by outperforming competitors in efficiently and effectively serving customers! I suggest reading The Loyalty Effect or The Living Company instead, either of which can help you achieve that beneficial result. You might also want to consider The Innovator's Solution which looks at the importance of moving well beyond the core.

The authors try and define the core business and argue that this will create most of the profits. To maintain future profits adjacancies have to be found to support core growth. The authors put no real framework forward as to how one might discover these adjacencies and the book falls apart. Although the data is impressive and supports some of the arguments the reader can't help fealing that cause (core focus) is directly related to effect (higher profits). With the examples used the reader starts to question if other factors were more responsible for profit growth.

The reader comes away at the end unconvinced by the book's arguements. Evidence shows that focusing on the core is indeed a good strategy - this book fails to convincingly prove the case.

Second, the author makes many important recommendations about how you should manage your company... strategically. Again, these recommendations are based largely on research done by the author or his peers mostly at Bain & Co. regarding maintaining competitive advantage.

With the exception of Jack Welch (and previously Geneen at IT&T, I'm sure), large conglomerates can not maintain growth rates over long periods of time (ten years was the period used in the book).

So, the recommendations that your company stick to its knitting ("the core") is the foundation of the book. But many people already know this. So, most interesting, are the recommendations and research that show the nuances.

For example, the author shows how the areas around your core business offer the most profitable opportunities for fast growth... yet also contain the most dangers from encroaching competitors, or bad fitting investments. He calls this area your adjacency.

The author suggests that how you manage your adjacency largely determines your success at long term business growth.

There are too many concepts and details to summarize here. There is a lot of meat to the book (although it is not a huge book). Still it is fairly easy to read. You will not whiz through the book because you will often pause to consider the ramifications of the author's points. But it is not a difficult read.

The books major points are well illustrated with many examples (Dell, Microsoft, Starbucks, W.W. Grainger, etc.).

This book is most appropriate for management involved in strategy, and investors trying to figure out the appropriateness of acquisitions by companies.

Most of the pages in my book are underlined. The stories fit the observations and recommedations well. The research presented was most interesting, and was often summarized into easily read charts and tables.

I highly recommend this book. There are lots of implementable ideas in this book. As an investor you will be able to spot an inappropriate acquisition much more easily. ...