"This is a book about corporate strategy. It is based on my belief that the time is ripe for corporate strategy, like science at the time of Galileo, to break out of the chains and dogmas of its own Middle Ages. Like the Renaissance itself, it is time for corporate strategy to reach back into the richness of human history and reach out to the habits, logic and values of science."

"Astrology? What does astrology have to do with business strategy?

Unfortunately, everything. To see why, and what to do about it, we have to go on an intellectual excursion-in fact this whole book is just such an adventure. Our purpose here is not to promote a new strategy (or a new diet). Instead, we're going to go into the heart of the concept of strategy. We're going to look at history and nature and see what each can teach us about strategy. We're going to shed the straitjacket of business anecdotes and look at the logic of scientific discovery. We're going to look at what makes any good strategy work-the very conditions for strategy. "We're not going to be just conceptual; we're going to be practical. I promise that by the end of every chapter you will have discovered the possibility for doing something different--tomorrow. But without a firm grasp on the conceptual foundations of strategy, we'll just flounder among the anecdotes of how Toyota does it, how Microsoft is doing it, and how Wal-Mart did it. I said a minute ago that the problem with the multitude of strategic approaches was that they supply too much truth-too much confirming evidence. Our excursion begins with why that's so-and why we need not the right way to be right, but the right way to be wrong."

Ready?

"If you've read this far, you are already far ahead of most corporate strategic thinkers in companies today. But taking these insights about falsification versus verification real is a journey that will take us through a three-stage adventure:

In Chapters Two and Three we'll recognize that being a strong, falsifiable hypothesis isn't enough. It turns out that great strategies have important structures in common. So we'll perform some strategic dissection, using military history and other tools to help you make sure that your strategic body has all its needed parts.

In Chapters Four and Five we'll show why one well-known touchstone for a great strategy-whether it creates a Sustainable Competitive Advantage--is powerful but desperately obsolete. However SCA, as it's known, gives way to a new vision of strategy-one that recognizes that strategy has a life-cycle, like other living things. This is OCE: Opportunity Creation and Exploitation.

Chapters Six, Seven and Eight make the most of the OCE insight. Chapter Six provides concrete tools for better hypothesis generation and testing. It examines why market research and consultants are normally mis-used-and what to do about it. Chapter Seven maps management's choices for making a great strategy happen in the real world. It sets out the rewards and dangers for different methods of creating strategic breakthroughs-and exploiting those breakthroughs. Chapter Eight shows how OCE requires a radical new way of thinking about allocating, accounting for and budgeting resources. One or two of these ideas will drive Wall Street crazy, but give managers much more control and flexibility.

Chapters Nine and Ten deal with the human side of strategic success. In Chapter Nine we explore why success's biggest enemy is the invisible, gravitational force known as culture. But we're not content with that surface insight. Instead we dive deeper and look at the causes and life cycle of corporate culture itself and its precise impact on strategy. In Chapter Ten we again gather insights from history and psychology to provide tools for your company's Top Management Team to reshape culture to strategic needs.

Finally, in Chapter Eleven we summarize in 81 Do's and Don'ts just what companies should do to create, test, and implement winning corporate strategies. You may be tempted to tear out these pages.