The first strategy book we bought and read in the early ‘80s. This is a classic work. Ohmae was the head of  McKinsey in Japan. A readable, compact book. The important message, as the title suggests, is that strategy is as much about thinking differently – acquiring a different mindset – as it is about producing a plan. One of the early (or the first) thinkers to focus on strategy as competitive advantage. Good practical stuff – a must read.

Harvard Business School Press; ISBN: 0875847161

Hamel pioneered the concept of “core competences” and how they are key to enabling companies to be successful in the long term. We applied some of the key concepts of this book very successfully in an early strategic visioning exercise with a major British Bank in the mid-90's.

Hamel covers much more ground than just core competences however. He is firmly in the optimistic, innovative, Schumperterian "creative destruction" camp, rather than the cost-cutting and stick to the knitting brigade. Hamel is fundamentally a believer that change is inevitable, we must keep doing it, and this book was his first in explaining how. Hamel can be criticised as being long on rhetoric and short on practicalities, but, to be inspired, read this!

New American Library; ISBN: 0452283248

Another great – perhaps even better – book by Hamel (without Pralahad), this time applying revolutionary zeal to complete re-invention of the corporation. The book has many excellent components. Chapter 3 on Business Concept Innovation takes a really fresh look at the concept of the Business Model. A lot of the book is about innovation and how to nurture it. Not a traditional strategy book; great on examples and insights, but, again, don’t expect detailed “how-to”. It’s one to have if you want fresh inspiration on how a company can be different.

Financial Times Prentice Hall; ISBN: 0273650378

This is by far the most serious textbook on the subject written anywhere, and at any time. Minztberg is a wonderful writer, and although this is a serious textbook, his prose is entertaining and lucid. If you want to understand the great myths and fallacies of strategic planning, the pitfalls you can fall into, and a lot about the history of the process, this is the book. It is a “must-have” for the bookshelf, but it is one to dip into and (for me at least) to read selectively. The reader could, for example, get a lot out of reading Chapter 4 on the Pitfalls of Planning. Mintzberg has done the most exhaustive review of management literature and experience to come up with views on what works and what doesn’t, and he has all the references to prove it.

Oxford Paperbacks; ISBN: 019828988X

A massive, deep and insightful book. John Kay, one of Britain’s leading economic thinkers wrote this at the behest of Sainsbury to try to answer the question “what makes companies successful?” Kay is a serious brain-box, so don’t expect a light read. And don’t buy this for a quick overview of how to do strategy. But if you want to embark on some deep thinking on what makes companies successful this is a classic work. Kay takes an economist’s view of how to measure “success” and defines it as added-value – the way a company adds more (or less) value to its inputs so as to produce its outputs. Despite that stance, Kay manages to cover (among other topics): the game theory behind the way companies co-operate; the value of reputation; innovation and what makes it valuable; and how a company’s architecture can give it competitive advantage.

McGraw-Hill Education; ISBN: 0070531331

This is an excellent book by this very experienced Canadian consultant. It describes in some detail a very good and logical strategy process. It is a great book for understanding some very solid concepts about “how” to do strategy. Robert majors on the concept of understanding a company’s basic “driving force” – the one thing that is the basis on which the company competes. A company can only have one of these, and there are capabilities (like Hamel’s competencies) associated with each driving force. There are very good chapters on Strategy Deployment and Control of the “Sandbox” – i.e. how to compete. This is altogether an indispensable book, leaning much more to the “how-to” end of the strategy textbook spectrum.