Books by Peter S. Cohan

Know how your company can accelerate growth by not only tapping into new growth vectors, but also by adapting its organization, culture, and processes. To oversee growth from an idea to a company with billions in revenue, CEOs must reinvent many aspects of their company in anticipation of it reaching ever-higher revenues.

Accelerate your company's growth in a disciplined fashion. This book provides leaders of large and small companies a proven comprehensive framework to think systematically about growth options and to yield practical strategies that produce faster growth.Drawing insights from case studies of successful and unsuccessful companies, strategy teacher and venture capitalist Peter Cohan models his systematic approach to brainstorming, evaluating, and implementing growth strategies across five dimensions: Customers, Geography, Products, Capabilities, Culture. He examines each of these five growth dimensions in turn, selecting and organizing his cases to compare the growth strategies deployed successfully and unsuccessfully by large and small companies along the given dimension. In each of his five dimensional chapters, the author derives from his case analyses the key principles and processes for creating and achieving faster growth.Professor Cohan draws on a network of hundreds of founders, CEOs, and investors developed through his decades of consulting, authorship of 11 books, and over five years as a Forbes columnist. He shows through many compelling stories how leaders craft effective growth strategies.Business leaders will learn the following lessons from this book:Achieving rapid but sustainable growth is a business leader's most important responsibility - and leaders must approach this challenge with a mixture of vision, intellectual humility, and a willingness to experiment and learn from failure.The growth challenges facing companies that are currently growing quickly differ from the ones that stagnating or shrinking companies must overcome.Companies can achieve growth along one or more of the dimensions simultaneously - and they often expand geographically to customers in the same segments.Useful insights can emerge from comparing case studies of successful and unsuccessful companies pursuing similar growth strategies.Companies should select a growth strategy based on three factors: the attractiveness of the growth opportunity, the company's capabilities to provide superior value to customers in the selected market, and the expected return on investment in the growth vector.Companies should select a growth strategy that best fits their capabilities and culture and they must enhance both to adapt to new growth opportunities.Who This Book Is ForThe people in companies who are responsible for growth: chief executive officers, chief marketing officers, chief product officers, heads of business development, product managers, sales people, and human resources managers

After years of working with startups Peter Cohan discovered that, contrary to the conventional wisdom entrepreneurs start companies to feed their hunger to create the world they want to live in - not to maximize shareholder value or create a fortune for financiers. Based on first-hand work and research with hundreds of start-ups, Peter Cohan has created a strategy handbook to allow entrepreneurs to start small and finish big. He emphasizes that strategy for start-ups is always short-term strategy often with a six-month window or less. By keeping focus on the short-term, entrepreneurs can keep their visions and their companies under their own control. The game is to postpone any need for outside finance for as long as possible.Most existing strategy guides are geared to larger companies and are of limited use to small startups. Cohan's strategic model focuses on six decision points where the strategy for small companies is radically different than that for large compenies: 1. Setting Goals, 2. Picking Markets, 3. Raising Capital, 4. Building Teams, 5. Gaining Market Share, and 6, Adapting to Change.

Follow America's High--Tech Leaders to Sustained Growth and Profitability ?With forceful and engaging style, Cohan describes what makes technology companies like Hewlett--Packard so successful. Any executive aspiring to market leadership should read The Technology Leaders. ? ---- Dean O.