NEW BOOK EXAMINES THE CREATION OF CORPORATE SYNERGIES
Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan Co-Authors Next Step in the Balanced Scorecard Approach
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| Robert S. Kaplan |
BOSTON - Every multi-unit enterprise strives to create synergies from its collection of business units, but few use a systematic process to strategically align those units in order to capture potential scale and scope economies. In Alignment: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create Corporate Synergies (Harvard Business School Press; April 2006), Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan and David Norton, president of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, provide a step-by-step alignment process for companies to realize a new source of value – what they call enterprise-derived value – from business units, thus creating synergy not only within the company but between the firm and its board of directors, investors, customers, and suppliers.
Alignment is the fourth book from Kaplan and Norton, the creators of the Balanced Scorecard technique for analyzing organizational performance. In this latest offering, the authors maintain that the responsibility for organizational alignment lies with corporate headquarters. They detail how top executives can build a corporate-level strategy map and scorecard that graphically depict their company’s enterprise value proposition and use the Balanced Scorecard management system to set, coordinate, and oversee the implementation of high-level strategy.
Through numerous case studies, actionable frameworks, and sample strategy maps and scorecards, Kaplan and Norton show how numerous private, public, and nonprofit organizations create and capture enterprise-level value. The book provides an array of powerful techniques that can be put into practice, including:
- Ways to leverage financial synergies across a diverse corporate portfolio – for instance, through effective monitoring and resource allocation processes;
- Methods for encouraging the cross-selling of products and services to create unique solutions for customers shared among multiple business units;
- Techniques for sharing common processes among units to gain economies of scale and capture specialized knowledge and expertise.
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=6905
About the Authors
Robert S. Kaplan is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and co-founder and chairman of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Inc., a Palladium company dedicated to the worldwide awareness, use, enhancement, and integrity of the Balanced Scorecard as a value-added management process. He was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration of Carnegie Mellon University from 1968 to 1984, serving as dean from 1977 to 1983. He is also co-developer of activity-based costing. Kaplan has authored or co-authored twelve books (including The Strategy-Based Organization and Strategy Maps), fifteen Harvard Business Review articles, and more than 120 papers. In 2006, he received the Lifetime Contribution Award from the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association, and in December 2004, he received the Telecom Italia Prize for Leadership on Business and Economic Thinking. The Accenture Institute for Strategic Change named him, in 2002 and 2003, among the Top 50 Thinkers and Writers on Management Topics. The Financial Times identified Kaplan and Norton on its list of Top 25 Business Thinkers. Kaplan received the Outstanding Accounting Educator Award in 2988 from the American Accounting Association (AAA), the 1994 CIMA Award from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (UK), and the 2001 Distinguished Service Award from the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA).
David P. Norton, who earned a doctorate in business administration from Harvard Business School in 1973, is founder and president of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative. Previously, he was president of Renaissance Solutions, Inc., a consulting form he co-founded in 1992, and of Nolan, Norton & Company, where he spent seventeen years in the field of strategic performance management. He is a trustee of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a former director of the Association of Consulting Management Engineers.
About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located on a 40-acre campus in Boston. Its faculty of more than 200 offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 Executive Education programs. For almost a century, HBS faculty have drawn on their research, their experience in working with organizations worldwide, and their passion for teaching to educate leaders who have shaped the practice of business around the globe.