What's the secret to a company's continued growth and prosperity? Internationally known marketing expert Al Ries has the answer: focus. His commonsense approach to business management is founded on the premise that long-lasting success depends on focusing on core products and eschewing the temptation to diversify into unrelated enterprises. Using real-world examples, Ries shows that in industry after industry, it is the companies that resist diversification, and focus instead on owning a category in consumers' minds, that dominate their markets. He offers solid guidance on how to get focused and how to stay focused, laying out a workable blueprint for any company's evolution that will increase market share and shareholder value while ensuring future success. “Big word. Big book. I recommend it heartily for anyone who needs a whack on the side of the head to remind them of the folly of being unfocused.” - Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited “A new standard for corporate competitiveness...indispensable to companies large and small.” - Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within What's the secret to a company's continued growth and prosperity? Internationally known marketing expert Al Ries has the answer: focus. His commonsense approach to business management is founded on the premise that long-lasting success depends on focusing on core products and eschewing the temptation to diversify into unrelated enterprises. Using real-world examples, Ries shows that in industry after industry, it is the companies that resist diversification, and focus instead on owning a category in consumers' minds, that dominate their markets. He offers solid guidance on how to get focused and how to stay focused, laying out a workable blueprint for any company's evolution that will increase market share and shareholder value while ensuring future success. Al Ries and his daughter and business partner Laura Ries are two of the world's best-known marketing consultants, and their firm, Ries & Ries, works with many Fortune 500 companies. They are the authors of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR , which was a Wall Street Journal and a BusinessWeek bestseller, and, most recently, The Origin of Brands . Al was recently named one of the Top 10 Business Gurus by the Marketing Executives Networking Group. Laura is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the Fox News and Fox Business Channels, CNN, CNBC, PBS, ABC, CBS, and others. Their Web site (Ries.com) has some simple tests that will help you determine whether you are a left brainer or a right brainer. Focus The Future of Your Company Depends on It By Al Ries HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Al Ries All right reserved. ISBN: 0060799900 Chapter One The Unfocusing of Corporate America What's the driving force in Corporate America? In a word, growth. Management demands substantial increases in annual sales and profits, even when companies are in markets that show no overall growth. Predictably, in order to meet these targets, companies offer more varieties and flavors. Or they branch out into other markets. Or they acquire other firms or products. Or they set up joint ventures. Whether you call this expansion process "line extension" or "diversification" or "synergy," it's the process itself, the urge to grow, that causes companies to become unfocused. That's why a company like IBM can have $63 billion in revenues and still lose $8 billion. And General Motors can have $133 billion in revenues and still lose $23 billion. While growth might be an admirable result of other initiatives, the pursuit of growth for its own sake is a serious strategic error. It's the major reason why so many American corporations have become unfocused. Chief executive officers have been paying the price for their strategic mistakes. There's no question that many CEOs have made strategic errors that have unfocused their companies. Never in history have so many chief executives been handed their hat and told to go home by their own boards of directors. To name a few: James Robinson at American Express, John Sculley at Apple, Anthony D'Amato and Ervin Shames at Borden, Barry Gibbons at Burger King, Rod Canion at Compaq, Ken Olsen at Digital Equipment, Kay Whitmore at Eastman Kodak, Robert Stempel at General Motors, Tom Barrett at Goodyear, John Akers at IBM, Joseph Antonini at Kmart, William Agee at Morrison Knudsen, and Paul Lego at Westinghouse. It's not just the pursuit of growth that causes unfocusing problems. Unfocusing itself seems to be a natural phenomenon that occurs without any conscious effort on a company's part. A successful company usually starts out highly focused on an individual product, service, or market. Over time, the company becomes unfocused. It offers too many products and services for too many markets at too many different price levels. It loses its sense of dir