三大规则：杰出公司如何思考

关于本书：

最后，一个终极商业问题的答案：一些公司如何实现长期卓越的业绩？

In every sector, there’s an outlier. In the phar­maceutical industry, it’s Merck. In discount retail, it’s Family Dollar. It used to be Wrig­ley in candy and Maytag in appliances. Other superstars have been hidden in plain sight, like Heartland Express in trucking or Linear Technology in semiconductors. How do these exceptional companies deliver superior perfor­mance over the long run despite facing the same constraints as competitors? What are they doing differently? What can we learn from them?

Michael E. Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed have analyzed data on more than 25,000 com­panies spanning forty-five years. Their five-year study began with a sophisticated statistical analysis to identify which companies have truly exceptional performance, 344 in all.

In collaboration with teams of researchers, Raynor and Ahmed then put a carefully chosen representative sample of twenty-seven com­panies under the microscope to uncover what made the stand-out performers different. They found that exceptional companies, when faced with difficult decisions, follow three rules:

在便宜之前更好。他们很少在价格上竞争。
成本前的收入。他们通过价格和数量来推动利润，而不是节俭。
没有其他规则。其他一切都可以争取，他们愿意改变任何事情以保持前两条规则的真实性。

The rules provide an indispensable compass that any company can use to chart its own path to greatness. Is it better to keep price down or invest in creating value that commands a higher price? Should you focus on talent and develop­ing the abilities of your people or build processes to extend the capabilities of your organization? How about acquiring a sizable competitor to secure economies of scale—or a small start-up to gain access to new technology? According to Raynor and Ahmed, the right answers to these and just about every other question are the ones most closely aligned with the rules.

三大规则 is built on a powerful combina­tion of large-scale data analysis and in-depth case studies. Its guidance will increase the chance that your organization can become truly exceptional.