"Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs"

The Harvard Center Shanghai organized a talk and reception with Professor David B. Yoffie, Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration, on November 10, 2014. Professor Yoffie presented findings from his new book: Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs.

The forthcoming book explores how Bill Gates, Andy Grove and Steve Jobs drove strategy and execution as CEOs of Microsoft, Intel, and Apple. These three CEO led their organizations to become the most valuable companies in the world during their tenures. The argument is that despite enormous differences in personalities and leadership styles, they shared a powerful approach to strategy that we can describe through five rules that other managers and entrepreneurs can learn: look forward and then reason backward; make big bets, but without betting the company; build platforms and ecosystems, rather than just standalone products or companies; exploit both leverage and power, what we call “judo” and “sumo” tactics; and drive execution by shaping the organization around the CEO’s “personal anchor.” The research is the result of more than 20 years of observing these three executives and their companies.

Professor Yoffie has spent 25 years on Intel’s board of directors and has written more than 40 cases on the three companies, in addition to co-authoring two related books: Competing on Internet Time, (1998), with Cusumano that examines the browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape; and Judo Strategy, (2001), with Mary Kwak, that explores how small firms can conquer industry giants.