Start Where You Are: Matching Your Strategy to Your Marketplace (Jossey Bass Business & Management Series) - Hardcover

William B. Rouse, chief executive officer of Enterprise Support Systems.

Rouse presents the thesis that only by thinking strategically and understanding emerging market relationships can organizations achieve future goals and create a competitive advantage. He proceeds to describe how to build and shape a company's future by assessing its current and future relationships with its markets through what he terms situation assessment--assessing what the situation is, how the situation is likely to unfold (likely consequences), and which situation should be pursued (the desirability and consequences of major options). Once a company knows where it is, the author challenges it to recognize where it is headed, and he explores how individual firms can successfully anticipate, recognize, and respond to change. Rouse concludes by illustrating his views on serving an existing market, creating a new market, and diversifying markets, all from his own experiences in the transportation, computer, and defense industries. Mary Whaley