“This groundbreaking book shows companies how to create the ultimate competitive advantage by focusing on the key minimum activities essential to business success.”
800-CEO-read, the leading direct supplier of business books
“The Escher Cycle is unlike any other business book you have ever read. It shows you how to bridge the gap between strategy and tactics, vision and pragmatism, simplifying and improving your business as you do so. It is essential reading for anyone looking to ignite the core of business advantage in the Information Age.”
— Martin Fry, Vice President, EDS EMEA & Asia Pacific
“Finn Jackson’s The Escher Cycle weaves powerful tools for building competitive advantage into a compelling, holistic framework. It offers a blueprint for winning any game your business chooses to play.”
— Kaihan Krippendorff, ex-McKinsey and author of The Art of the Advantage
“Well written, with clear and powerful ideas… What this book does very well is integrate and connect a large number of well-established business concepts. It presents and explains them more clearly than many strategy books, creating a powerful view of the world.”
— Kim Warren, Professor of Strategic & International Management, London Business School
“I know this may be a grand claim, but I think that Jackson has taken a shot at a ‘unified theory’ for business.”
— Todd Sattersten, President of 800CEO-Read.com and now the bizBookLab
“Delightful and insightful.”
— Gene Bellinger, writer and consultant
“Seldom does one find a book that brings strategy into the very heartland of business operations… In my judgement this is one of the most thought-provoking and practical guides for successful business development in recent years. It is a must for directors, senior management, and entrepreneurs…”
— John Fyfe, Professor of International Strategy, Harvard Business School
“Thought provoking… A mine of diverse information.”
— Patrick Sheehan, Managing Director, Technology, 3i
“This is one of the clearest accounts I have read about the principles of successful business strategy and practice. Finn Jackson doesn’t waste a word. He describes business as a living system; he understands the many different ideas that motivate business people, and he guides the reader through the maze without over complicating, or oversimplifying.”
— Mark Goyder, Director, Tomorrow’s Company
“The Forest and the Trees!”
“I read this book about a year ago, and it still sticks with me. This book steps back from each arm of a business to give a holistic view of not only how businesses operate, but how to integrate different functions: strategy, operations, marketing, finance, consumer research, etc.”
— Reviewer on Amazon.com
“Worth the read”
“I don’t get all the way through many books, but I finished this one.
It actually got better towards the end, with some really original thinking.”
— Reviewer on Amazon.com
“Finn Jackson is a very practical business architect. Instead of focusing on theoretical abstractions, he shows why concrete activities, choices and processes matter… paints a graphic picture of the unending elements of success.”
— Rolf Dobelli, GetAbstract.com
“As an internet start-up with more ambition than focus I have found this book invaluable in directing me in a no-nonsense way to figure out what we need to be doing to get revenue and growth. There is so much great business advice out there and people telling you what you should be doing, the difficulty is in figuring out what order you should tackle things. If I had achieved the perspective this book gave me earlier it would have saved me a year of development and given me a year of sales.
I shall be taking this book with me as my business grows. The simplicity of the lessons and framework apply at all stages from a start-up to a mature, century old company. If Kodak or the music industry had read this book and been keeping an eye on maintaining their strategic business advantage they would not be in the trouble they are now.”
— George Black, Start-up CEO, on Amazon.com
“I continue to be impressed with the brilliance of this book in explaining so much so simply and distilling it down to artfully to the essence of business and economies. The ending chapters where you connect a business system with a natural system are very powerful.”
— Suzanne Enright, Executive coach and leadership development consultant, working with global leaders, Kensu Leadership Group Inc