This page highlights several books that members have indicated as potentially being of interest to current and prospective practitioners of corporate portfolio management.  If you've read any books that you feel would be beneficial to members of the CPMA, please send us an email and recommend them so we can consider adding them to this list.  To learn more about any of the books, just click on the title of the book.  Descriptions below the bulleted list are also given for your convenience. 

• Managing Customers as Investments: The Strategic Value of Customers in the Long Run 
• From Resource Allocation to Strategy
• Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy (special)
• The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers
• The Innovator's Dilemma
• Managing IT as a Business: A Survival Guide for CEOs

Short summary descriptions of each book given above are below:

Managing Customers as Investments: The Strategic Value of Customers in the Long Runby Sunil Gupta and Donald Lehmann.  It's more important than ever for companies to objectively assess the value of their customers. But conventional measures of ""customer lifetime value"" haven't been linked to overall business value and haven't been useful to senior managers. Managing Customers as Investments overcomes both shortcomings.

From Resource Allocation to Strategyby Clark Gilbert and Joseph Bower.  A collection of some of the leading experts on strategy to examine how strategy is actually made by company managers across the several levels of an organization. Is strategy a coherent plan conceived at the top by a visionary leader, or is it formed by a series of smaller decisions, not always reflecting what top management has in mind? Often it is by examining how options for using resources are developed and selected, that we can see how a company's competitive position gets shaped. On the basis of this understanding, we can see better how these processes can be managed.

Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy by Anand Sanwal with foreword by Gary Crittend, CFO Citigroup.  If where an organization allocates its resources determines its strategy, why is it that so few companies actively manage the resource allocation process? "Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy" goes beyond platitudes about why you should use corporate portfolio management (CPM) by offering a practical methodology to bring this powerful discipline to your organization.

We have a limited number of author autographed copies (15) of Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management available for 30% off.  If interested in getting one of these, visit the link at Amazon by clicking here. 

The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managersby Phil Rosenweig.  This tart takedown of fashionable management theories is a refreshing antidote to the glut of simplistic books about achieving high performance. Rosenzweig, a veteran business manager turned professor, argues that most popular business ideas are no more than soothing platitudes that promise easy success to harried managers. Consultants, journalists and other pundits tap scientifically suspect methods to produce what he calls "business delusions": deeply flawed and widely held assumptions tainted by the "halo effect," or the need to attribute sweeping positive qualities to any company that has achieved success. Following these delusions might provide managers with a comforting story that helps them frame their actions, but it also leads them to gross simplification and to ignore the constant demands of changing technologies, markets, customers and situations.

The Innovator's Dilemmaby Clayton M. Christensen.  A classic on innovation.  At the heart of The Innovator's Dilemma is how a successful company with established products keeps from being pushed aside by newer, cheaper products that will, over time, get better and become a serious threat. Christensen writes that even the best-managed companies, in spite of their attention to customers and continual investment in new technology, are susceptible to failure no matter what the industry, be it hard drives or consumer retailing. Succinct and clearly written, The Innovator's Dilemma is an important book that belongs on every manager's bookshelf. Highly recommended.