My favourite book by Pamkaj Ghemawat is “Strategy and the Business Landscape”.

Pankaj Ghemawat is the Global Professor of Management and Strategy and Director of the Center for the Globalization of Education and Management at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School.

Strategy and the Business Landscape is not as well-known as World 3.0, nor as current as “The New Global Roadmap”, but it’s a strategy manual supporting the Harvard Business School MBA course of Strategy since the 1980’s.

Pankat Ghemawat’s preface clarifies that the book is intended to be an example of rigour and ease of reading. In terms of rigour the content is based on research in the field of strategy, focused on Value Proposition. In terms of readability, I can’t fail to point out that the book does not exceed 150 pages … which is extremely positive in my opinion. Management books tend to stretch painfully over hundreds of pages, but most of the basic ideas are explained in the first chapters with a long and painful drag on the next.

A manual usually escapes the drag of chapters but rarely escapes the temptation of being too long and seldom difficult to read.

Strategy and the Business Landscape escapes all these defects, excelling in explaining concepts, adding the elegance of rigorous and assertive writing.

The first chapter presents a summary of the Origins of Strategy that acts as a background for the rest of the work. The remaining chapters cover classical subjects such as Creating Value and Competitive Advantages, Competition Dynamics and Long-term Performance Sustaining.

For the condensed and summarized – without ever being simplistic – introduction of Strategy topics, this is my favourite manual about Strategy.