Olin Business School Professor Authors New Guide to Growth Strategy for Practitioners

    SAINT LOUIS, MO, October 15, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- From best practices to "next practices," Olin Business School professor Anjan Thakor, publishes a new guide for senior business managers and executives who want to create an innovative growth strategy.

The Four Colors of Business Growth, by Anjan Thakor, PhD, the John E. Simon Professor of Finance at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, is the culmination of many years of research and teaching on the subject of innovation.

"The writing style is deliberately designed to communicate to practitioners and be highly accessible," Thakor says. "Every chapter in the book attempts to take the research insights that come from the body of knowledge in that discipline and then attempt to show managers how they can use these insights in their own organizations to approach the challenge of innovation."

The book examines the topics of corporate strategy, finance, organizational behavior, change management and leadership.

"I think the main contribution of the book is that it's written for managers and senior executives who are thinking about how to formulate a growth strategy that is effective," Thakor says.

"It talks about four different approaches, or four different classes of strategies, that firms could adopt to grow. That relates to the four quadrants in the competing values framework that we've developed over the past 20 years."

The book shows managers the best practices and examples of companies that have managed growth effectively.

"But the book goes beyond best practices," Thakor says. "It focuses also on what I call "next practices," which are best practices that are not here yet but which are emerging."

"It's not very long, it's fun to read, but it contains most of the key research ideas and most of the key consulting insights that have generated over the past 10 or 15 years," he says.

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Website: http://www.olin.wustl.edu

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