"I wrote this book as the expression of my frustration by a general lack of understanding on what relies the strategic management of firms. In the present world the word "strategy" is associated with so much of foggy content that its notion became washed from any concrete sense. However even when that sense exists, it appears useless. A perfect example of this is a very fashionable reflection on so called strategic mission and vision of the corporation. From the philosophical point of view this is, no doubt, interesting - however in the present economic situation of the world both, mission and vision, can be recognized as only beautiful theory, and considering idle discussions on their theme to be the same as the process of building the corporate strategy is simply ridiculous. Distant I am from the idea that the company has no duties towards her own employees, consumers and the society, however her main objective remains with no doubt the realization of profits. The main goal of the strategy consists in explaining how to achieve this. It results from here that the strategy must be very concrete. I have no idea why so many elaborations about this theme remind literary essays, delivering to readers nothing useful - except only the pleasure of reading. My purpose was to create a really practice oriented book about the corporate strategy, illustrated with exercises, the realization of which can provide concrete skills rather than encyclopedic knowledge. The rapid development of computer science was here a great help for me, giving the possibility of building strategic simulators and providing book readers with an interactive computer program for testing different concrete strategies and their feasibility. And there is also another reason why I wrote this book. I want to make managers and students of management sensitive on the necessity of making in companies clear and well defined choices. As it is not possible to be young and old simultaneously, the firm cannot realize the mass market strategy - selling at the same time at very high prices, or market the same product to customers - belonging to completely different segments of the market. Many managers have difficulties with understanding this. I would be really happy that the present book - containing the mentioned computer simulation as well as other modern strategic tools - could help to overcome them." Book for general managers and chairmen of the boards but also for company teams working on corporate strategy, and of course for students of MBA programs Modern manual of building and conducting business strategy, contains 120 mini-cases and test engaging questions describing different strategic problems of concrete enterprises - with solutions, illustrations, diagrams and graphs Provides internet access to a new generation e-learning tool - CEOlight (electronic strategic simulator for Windows XP and Vista 32 bit) which gives to the reader the possibility to test the launch of concrete corporate strategies and also to examine their feasibility thanks to several (provided) analytic business tools
About the Author: Michel Muszynski is graduated from European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD). His career began in the marketing high-tech in Applied Research Labor-atories (the branch of Bausch and Lomb) in France and then in Beckman in Swit-zerland. In 1982 he became appointed as manager of international applications in Instruments S.A. in USA, and since 1988 held the position of CEO of MVE S.A. (branch of DANONE) in France. In 1990, he started in Warsaw the department of Institut Français de Gestion - the school of management based in Paris, running management postgraduate studies and delivering the diploma of Master of Business Administration. Professor Muszynski lives in Paris and is expert of strategic management. He is also author of about 200 publications devoted to this subject and specialist of computer assisted management. In 1990 he published in France one of first in the world manuals of the artificial intelligence applied in business ("Conduire une entreprise avec un système-expert") and then, in the USA "Multi-business: from diversification - to corporate holding", as well as "Interactive business simulations: e-learning and more". He is also author of over thirty strategic computer didactic simulation programs and creator of the unique method of teaching business with their use (now in four lingual versions). He also realized and published "Multimedia Encyclopedia of Management" on cd-rom.