• LearnSmart™! Available in Beta for Spring 2014. LearnSmart ensures your students are learning faster, studying more efficiently, and retaining more knowledge. It pinpoints concepts the student does not understand and maps out a personalized study plan for success. Based on students' self-diagnoses of their proficiencies, LearnSmart intelligently provides students with a series of adaptive questions. This provides students with a personalized one-on-one tutor experience.

• SmartBook™! Available in Beta Spring 2014. Fueled by LearnSmart—the most widely used and intelligent adaptive learning resource proven to advance learning since 2009—SmartBook is the first and only adaptive reading experience available today. Distinguishing what a student knows from what they don’t, and honing in on concepts they are most likely to forget, SmartBook personalizes content for each student in a continuously adapting reading experience. Reading is no longer a passive and linear experience, but an engaging and dynamic one where students are more likely to master and retain important concepts, coming to class better prepared. Valuable reports provide instructors insight as to how students are progressing through textbook content, useful for shaping in-class time or assessment.

• New Issue for Debate feature – New feature for the 7^th edition, the Issue for Debate feature provides a situation that has viable alternate points of view with suggested answers in the Instructor’s Manual. It is an exciting way to drive home key strategy concepts. Examples include: Ch.1, Seventh Generation is faced with a situation that confronts their values, and they must decide whether or not to provide their products to some of their largest customers; Ch. 3, some interesting tradeoffs arise when The World Triathlon Corporation expanded their exclusive branding of Ironman to products that don’t represent the spirit of the brand; and Ch.6, Delta Airlines diversification into the oil business via their acquisition of an oil refinery.

• New content on “Hard Trends” and “Soft Trends” in Chapter 2. Articulated by Dan Burrus in his book, Flash Foresight, this distinction is very important in deterring the importance of current trends and their evolution over time.

• New Learning from Mistakes – All of The Learning from Mistakes features are new to the 7^th edition! Unique to this text, these vignettes are all examples of what can go wrong, and they serve as an excellent vehicle for clarifying and reinforcing strategy concepts – suggested answers provided in the Instructor’s Manual. After all, what can be learned if one simply admires perfection!

• New Strategy Spotlights (sidebar examples)- more than half of all Strategy Spotlight examples are new, and others have been thoroughly revised for this new edition. These spotlights focus on bringing the most important strategy concepts to life in a concise and highly readable manner. Examples include: Mayo Clinic’s Transformation into a Knowledge Organization (pg. 42); The Economic Crisis in Europe (pg. 7); The Business Case for Sustainability (pg. 180); and The use of “Soft” Power at Siemens (pg. 405)

• New and Updated Exhibits – New exhibits have been added in the text and many have been revised and updated. This aids in the learning process and improves visual appeal. To further enhance readability and impact, the authors have worked hard to write short paragraphs and provide many indented examples throughout the book

• Updated Case Lineup – This edition provides 7 new cases and 29 cases have been updated significantly to “maximize freshness” and minimize instructor preparation. In the Seventh Edition, about half of the 36 cases are author-written. New cases include: Backers Beware: Kickstarter Is Not a Store; Wind’s Up! Competing in the Windsurfing Industry; Campbell: Is the Soup Still Simmering?; Beiersdorf AG: Expanding Nivea’s Global Reach; The Boston Beer Company; Louis Vuitton; and Zynga

Retained Features

• Connect® Management is an online assignment and assessment solution that connects students with the tools and resources they’ll need to achieve success. McGraw-Hill Connect Management helps prepare students for their future by enabling faster learning, more efficient studying, and higher retention of knowledge. Connect Management offers you and your students powerful tools and features that optimize your time and energies, enabling you to focus on course content, teaching, and student learning. Connect Management also offers a wealth of content resources for both instructors and students. For more information about Connect, go to www.mcgrawhillconnect.com, or contact your local McGraw-Hill representative for access to an instructor account. Connect Management includes:

  • Interactive Applications exercises drill students in the use of application of concepts and tools of strategic analysis.
  • Case Exercises – Available for 12 cases. Case Exercises are tailored to the circumstances presented in each case; it calls upon students to strategic analysis to arrive at pragmatic, analysis-based action recommendations for improving company performance.
  • Additionally, there will be Financial Analysis exercises related to the case exercises that use an IRT format (intelligent response technology) where students will be able to enter many calculations into a table format further testing their case analysis.




• Focus on ethics, environmental sustainability, and crowdsourcing – Delivered via Strategy Spotlights, Strategic Management now emphasizes these issues that are critical in today’s leading-edge organizations.

• Traditional Organizing Framework – The traditional organizing framework includes crisply-written chapters that address contemporary topics. Strategic Management is divided into chapters in the traditional sequence: analysis, formulation, and implementation.

• Clear, Concise, and Timely – Key strategic concepts are introduced in a clear and concise manner and followed by timely and interesting examples from business practice. These concepts include Porter’s five-forces, the value chain, the resource based view of the firm, competitive advantage, boundary-less organizations, digital strategies, ethics, corporate governance, and entrepreneurship.

• Implications for Small Businesses – Many key text concepts are applied to start-up firms and smaller businesses. This is particularly important and relevant given the fact that many students will begin their professional careers in just these kinds of smaller firms.

• Author-Prepared, Prep-Time Reducing Instructor Manual and Revised Test Bank by Christine Pence of the University of California – Riverside – The authors prepare their own Instructor Manual and Test Bank with the primary goal to save instructors prep time. While many books outline or summarize the text materials, Dess/Lumpkin/Eisner/McNamara focus on “value added” materials. Each chapter includes many suggested questions to spur in-class discussion as well as three teaching tips for each chapter to further stimulate debate and practical applications of course concepts. In addition, there are many examples and “war stories” to provide illustrations of key concepts—that are not found in the text. Reviewers consistently rate the Dess IM the best one available in this market.

• Revised! Reflecting on Career Implications – Every chapter provides 4 – 6 examples on how understanding of key concepts helps business students early in their careers. This unique feature, located before the Summary of each chapter, shows students the immediate relevance and value of studying and understanding strategy concepts.