Strategic Management

Operational Risk is one of the important arms of the risk management triangle, the other two being Credit Risk and Market (Treasury) Risk. Any organisation, particularly in the banking sector, is squarely exposed to operational risks emanating within or outside the organisation.There was no precise definition of operational risk until Basel Accord II came into being in June 2004. For the first time in the history of global banking, operational risk capital charge has been made a mandatory requirement in banking. This certainly puts in a lot of stress and strain on a bank’s management. The entire gamut of operational risk has been visited and covered in the appropriate chapters of this book.

A rigorous two-year study of the top 800 value-creating public companies found that growth generated internally through a commitment to customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and profitability resulted in consistent employee retention, stock value improvements, and better returns on investment.

In The Road to Organic Growth, Edward Hess shares the full results of his breakthrough study, providing fresh, and often-surprising perspectives on what it really takes to foster organic growth. Using instructive examples from leading companies such as SYSCO, Best Buy,Tiffany & Company, Outback Steakhouse, and Stryker Corporation, Hess reveals the strategies these trailblazers used to achieve long-term growth from within.

Drawing upon original research, interviews, and in-depth corporate studies, Hess identifies the six keys to achieving organic growth and-most important-explains how to seamlessly and consistently incorporate them into a formula for sustainability and competitive advantage to

• Develop a simple, easy-to-understand business model and growth strategy
• Be entrepreneurial at the point of customer contact
• Measure everything-from finances to operations to behaviors
• Build an engaged, loyal, and multi-talented people pipeline
• Find humble, internally-focused operators to lead your company
• Be an execution and technology champion

  The Road to Organic Growth proves that you can build a sustainable, successful business without the expense of acquisitions, financial manipulations, or devaluing your employees. By exceeding customer expectations, building an employee-centric organization, and focusing intensely on measurement and performance, your company will achieve consistent, solid growth from within.

In this perennial best seller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, globally preeminent management thinkers W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne challenge everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written, Blue Ocean Strategy, now updated with fresh content from the authors, argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans” – untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any organization can use to create and capture their own blue oceans. This expanded edition includes: a new preface by the authors: “Help! My Ocean Is Turning Red”; updates on all cases and examples in the book; and two new chapters and an expanded third one – “Alignment, Renewal, and Red Ocean Traps” – that address some of the most pressing questions listeners and readers have asked over the years.

Coca-Cola. Harley-Davidson. Nike. Budweiser. Valued by customers more for what they symbolize than for what they do, products like these are more than brands–they are cultural icons. How do managers create brands that resonate so powerfully with consumers? Based on extensive historical analyses of some of America’s most successful iconic brands, including ESPN, Mountain Dew, Volkswagen, Budweiser, and Harley-Davidson, this book presents the first systematic model to explain how brands become icons. Douglas B. Holt shows how iconic brands create “identity myths” that, through powerful symbolism, soothe collective anxieties resulting from acute social change. Holt warns that icons can’t be built through conventional branding strategies, which focus on benefits, brand personalities, and emotional relationships. Instead, he calls for a deeper cultural perspective on traditional marketing themes like targeting, positioning, brand equity, and brand loyalty–and outlines a distinctive set of “cultural branding” principles that will radically alter how companies approach everything from marketing strategy to market research to hiring and training managers. Until now, Holt shows, even the most successful iconic brands have emerged more by intuition and serendipity than by design. With How Brands Become Icons, managers can leverage the principles behind some of the most successful brands of the last half-century to build their own iconic brands. Douglas B. Holt is associate professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School.