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More than 75 percent of the average firm's
market value is derived from intangible assets that traditional
financial metrics don't capture. Arguing that firms can't
manage what they can't measure, Robert S. Kaplan and David
P. Norton introduced a revolutionary performance measurement
system called the Balanced Scorecard to enable companies
to quantify critical intangibles such as people, information
and culture.
Now, more than a decade later, thousands
of companies around the world have adopted the Balanced
Scorecard not just as a measurement system, but as a strategic
management system -- with remarkable results. While 70 to
90 percent of strategic initiatives fail, Balanced Scorecard
companies consistently execute their strategies quickly
and successfully. How do they do it?
Based on their work with more than 300 organizations
spanning over a dozen years, Kaplan and Norton have created
a new tool that has turned out to be as important an innovation
as the Balanced Scorecard itself: strategy maps.
Just as you can't manage what you can't measure, say Kaplan
and Norton, you can't measure what you can't describe.
Using dozens of vivid company examples,
Kaplan and Norton show how to create customized strategy
maps that allow organizations to:
- Clarify their strategies and communicate
them to all employees
- Identify the key internal processes that
drive strategic success
- Align investments in people, technology,
and organizational capital for the greatest impact
- Expose gaps in the strategies and take
early corrective action
Providing the missing link between strategy
formulation and implementation, Strategy Maps is
a blueprint for describing, measuring, and aligning intangible
assets for superior performance.
Robert S. Kaplan is the Marvin Bower
Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business
School and Chairman of the Balanced Scorecard Collective.
David P. Norton is Co-Founder and President
of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative. Kaplan and Norton
are coauthors of The Balanced
Scorecard (1996) and The
Strategy-Focused Organization (2000),
both published by Harvard Business School Press.
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