Here's a startling concept for anyone who knows anything about business: "For successful companies, competition is irrelevant." Flying in the face of the conventional wisdom of most senior management today, the internationally noted business consultant Michel Robert explains why gigantically successful businesses ignore their competitors...and reap huge profits! How does it work?A number of CEOs who have used Robert's unique strategic thinking process--and are now true believers--recall in these pages how he enabled them to choose the right strategy for success in today's changing business environment. Unlike most other consultants, Robert and his staff go to corporate "war rooms"--not the business school library--to develop and hone the strategic thinking process. In more than 400 frank, intensive working sessions with CEOs and their management teams, Robert has tested and validated his methods. THE POWER OF STRATEGIC THINKING sums up his original and effective strategy of making anyone's competitors irrelevant: Obsession with your competitors leads to "imitation strategy," the common and disastrous mistake of letting the other side set the rules. Result: The house always wins! Imitators lose. The answer: Learn from major companies like Intel, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs--corporate success stories that Robert explains in fascinating detail--how to develop your own "distinctive strategy" and race ahead of the competition. Learn from the mistakes of copycat companies like Chrysler, Officemax, and all three original TV networks: Robert shows you how imitation strategies will put companies in virtually any field on a suicidal path. From military history, as Robert points out, comes the idea of "ultimate strategy," a proactive, offensive strategy that continually keeps the competition off-balance even as they become more and more irrelevant. Ultimate strategy is achieved when a company controls and/or influences the terms of play for an industry. Learn from THE POWER OF STRATEGIC THINKING how to set the rules for your own sandbox...or how to find another sandbox where you can! In THE POWER OF STRATEGIC THINKING you can learn how to become a winning company by formulating and implementing a proactive, offensive strategy that will have your own company signature. You will also find out how to widen your competitive advantages. Best of all, your ultimate strategy for success will develop from the power of your own strategic thinking!
Over the centuries, New Testament texts have inspired both peace activism and violence towards others. Most Christians, including New Testament scholars, continue to find peace at the core of these scriptures, and consider that the use of violence misrepresents basic Christian beliefs. This challenging study contends that the New Testament promotes violence as strongly as it promotes peace. Through close analysis of a wide range of texts, Desjardins shows how foundational both peace and violence are in the New Testament, and then suggests that the leading interpretative theories in this area do not do justice to the complexity of the primary sources.
The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (French Academy of Painting and Sculpture)—perhaps the single most influential art institution in history—governed the arts in France for more than 150 years, from its founding in 1648 until its abolition in 1793. Christian Michel's sweeping study presents an authoritative, in-depth analysis of the Académie’s history and legacy. The Académie Royale assembled nearly all of the important French artists working at the time, maintained a virtual monopoly on teaching and exhibitions, enjoyed a priority in obtaining royal commissions, and deeply influenced the artistic landscape in France. Yet the institution remains little understood today: all commentary on it, during its existence and since its abolition, is based on prejudices, both favorable and critical, that have shaped the way the institution has been appraised. This book takes a different approach. Rather than judging the Académie Royale, Michel unravels existing critical discourse to consider the nuances and complexities of the academy’s history, reexamining its goals, the shifting power dynamics both within the institution and in the larger political landscape, and its relationship with other French academies and guilds.
On September 13, 2000, Michel Auger was walking away from his car in a parking lot across the street from the offices of Le Journal de Montréal when he was shot in the back six times. Miraculously, although at least one bullet lodged in his spine, no vital organs were damaged. Auger was on his feet again within weeks, and able to resume his normal life. The practice of journalism is dangerous in many parts of the world. But in Canada? The idea that an assassin would attempt to take the life of a journalist because of something he wrote is almost unthinkable. Either a deadly new threat has appeared on the scene or Michel Auger has learned something that is truly dangerous to know. Or perhaps both propositions are true. Michel Auger has been a crime reporter for some 30 years. He has covered mafia trials and corruption scandals, notorious murders and government inquiries. What he has seen and recorded has ranged from the sordid to the bizarre. He has interviewed notorious criminals, like Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, a member of the Ma Barker gang whose capture helped make J. Edgar Hoover’s name, and infamous Canadians, like the Montreal drug dealer Lucien Rivard, who escaped from Bordeaux jail while awaiting extradition to the United States. He has travelled to the Far East to see for himself where the drug trade begins, and to Sicily where he traced the origins of organized crime. Michel Auger’s knowledge of Canada’s underworld is as comprehensive as that of any reporter alive. In recent years he has developed a particular interest in the criminal activities of biker gangs, especially the Hell’s Angels and their rivals, the Rock Machine. Without a doubt, it was his series of articles in the spring of 2000 about the growing links between the Angels and other criminal organizations that led to the attempt on his life. Both the threat to civil society posed by the Angels and Michel Auger’s knowledge of their affairs had become so great that violence was the natural outcome. But, amazingly, Michel Auger survived the attempt on his life. In this frank, fascinating, and sometimes funny memoir, he tells about the bad guys he has known, the strange scenes he has witnessed, and above all, the true story of his deadly encounter with the bikers.
We think of Métis as having Prairie roots. Quebec doesn’t recognize a historical Métis community, and the Métis National Council contests the existence of any Métis east of Ontario. Quebec residents who seek recognition as Métis under the Canadian Constitution therefore face an uphill legal and political battle. Who is right? Bois-Brûlés examines archival and ethnographic evidence to challenge two powerful nationalisms – Métis and Québécois – that interpret Métis identity in the province as “race-shifting.” This controversial work, previously available only in French, conclusively demonstrates that a Métis community emerged in early-nineteenth-century Quebec and can be traced all the way to today.
In Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776-1838, Michel Ducharme shows that Canadian intellectual and political history between the American Revolution and the Upper and Lower Canada rebellions of 1837-38 can be better understood by considering it in relation to the broad framework of revolution in the Atlantic world between 1776 and 1838. Inspired by intellectual histories of the Atlantic world, Ducharme goes beyond the scholarly focus on Atlantic republicanism to present the rebellions of 1837-38 as a confrontation between two very different concepts of liberty. He uses these concepts as lenses through which to read colonial ideological conflict. Ducharme traces political discourse in both colonies, showing how the differing fates and influence of republican and constitutional notions of liberty affected state development. He also pursues a number of important revisionist historical claims, including the idea that nationalist politics were not at issue in the period and that "responsible government" was never a Patriote party platform or interest. Taking a wider view allows Ducharme to provide a solid understanding of the ideological substance of political conflict and shows that, starting in 1791, Canadian colonial political culture revolved around an ideal of liberty that differed from the liberty at work within the revolutionary movements of the late eighteenth century but was nonetheless born of the Enlightenment.
Michel Baridon traces the history of the most famous gardens in the world from their inception through the three centuries of eventful history that they have witnessed.
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