Name: The balanced scorecard
ISBN: 9780875846514

The balanced scorecard

The Balanced Scorecardtranslates a company's vision and strategy into a coherent set of performance measures. The four perspectives of the scorecard--financial measures, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth--offer a balance between short-term and long-term objectives, between outcomes desired and performance drivers of those outcomes, and between hard objective measures and softer, more subjective measures. In the first part, Kaplan and Norton provide the theoretical foundations for the Balanced Scorecard; in the second part, they describe the steps organizations must take to build their own Scorecards; and, finally, they discuss how the Balanced Scorecard can be used as a driver of change.

What Hacker News says

tryitnowSep 2019

This article represents one of the problems I have with HBR and "business school" literature in general.

It's a rehash of tried and true principles that have been described numerous times before almost always without attribution to original sources.

What's wrong with that?

Well, for one the authors are passing off work that is clearly not their own. Fine, whatever, it's a b-school publication, nobody takes their intellectual output seriously anyways.

But the more important problem is that you lose a sense of where this knowledge has come from, where it's been applied, how it's been applied, and other important context.

In other words, reading this article is basically a waste of time. It's better to stick to a handful of classic business texts (Drucker's a good place to start and yes, he goes over all the recommendations these authors make in Effective Executive). Reading Kaplan on the Balanced Scorecard is another good place to start.

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mindcrimeJun 2014

Wow, lots of good recommendations in this thread already... I skimmed them, but apologies in advance for any dupes:

I'd suggest some general "business strategy" works that will help you understand the context of how/why the very highest level business decisions are made, as well as some works that deal with tying together strategy and tactical execution (which includes technical initiatives).

1. Understanding Michael Porter - John Magretta. http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Michael-Porter-Essential...

Porter's framework is VERY influential in the business world, and having at least a passing familiarity with his work is important at the higher levels. Going straight to the primary sources (Porter's books) can be a bit daunting as they are big, dry, and academic and not exactly what you'd call "page turners". This book is a fairly solid overview of the key elements of Porter's approach, and a good read before diving into the meat of Porter's works.

2. Competitive Strategy - Michael Porter. http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Indust...

3. Competitive Advantage - Michael Porter. http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Advantage-Creating-Sustain...

4. On Competition - Michael Porter. http://www.amazon.com/On-Competition-Updated-Expanded-Editio...

5. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt. http://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/d...

6. Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne. http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Uncontested-Compet... This book has its critics, but I think it's a worthwhile read. Some people argue against the whole idea of a "blu e ocean" market, but even if the authors aren't 100% right about everything, I think the lines of thinking this book fosters are valuable in a general sense.

7. The Discipline of Market Leaders. http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Market-Leaders-Customers-Do... I think very highly of this book and the author's approach to strategy. It's not radically different from the Porterian approach in some ways, but I'd say it's narrower in focus and simpler. The big takeway is the idea (which should be obvious, but often isn't) that "you can't be everything to everyone". The authors push a model of choosing a market discipline to appeal to a certain type of customer, and making that discipline the core of your business.

8. The Machine That Changed The World. http://www.amazon.com/Machine-That-Changed-World-Revolutioni... Have you ever wondered what this "lean" stuff is all about? Or why Toyota is so revered by business leaders? Here's a good place to find the answer to those questions.

9. Working Knowledge- Davenport and Prusak. http://www.amazon.com/Working-Knowledge-Thomas-H-Davenport/d... Perhaps the seminal book on Knowledge Management, or at least one of them. If you want to understand the importance of knowledge in an organization, this is a very valuable read.

10. Outside Innovation - Patricia Seybold. http://www.amazon.com/Outside-Innovation-Customers-Co-Design...

11. The Future of Competition. http://www.amazon.com/Future-Competition-Co-Creating-Unique-...

12. The Balanced Scorecard. http://www.amazon.com/Balanced-Scorecard-Translating-Strateg...

13. Strategy Maps. http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Maps-Converting-Intangible-Ta...

14. The Strategy Focused Organization. http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Focused-Organization-Scorecar...

15. If Only We Knew What We Know. http://www.amazon.com/Only-Knew-What-Know-Knowledge/dp/14516... Another seminal title in the Knowledge Management world.

16. Common Knowledge - Nancy Dixon. http://www.amazon.com/Common-Knowledge-Companies-Thrive-Shar... Another seminal title in the Knowledge Management world.

17. Winning The Knowledge Transfer Race. http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Knowledge-Transfer-Michael-Eng...

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mindcrimeSep 2015

It's a long list, because I'm guilty of interleaving my reading of dozens (or more) of books at at time. My Goodreads "currently reading" shelf has about 25 books in it. :-(

But of the ones I'm really actively reading right now, and plan to finish soon:

1. Surfaces and Essences: Analogy As The Fuel And Fire Of Thinking - Douglas Hofstader and Emmanuel Sander

2. The Gathering Storm - Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

3. The Balanced Scorecard - David P. Norton and Robert S. Kaplan

Also, books that I don't really think of in terms of "reading" so much as "working through":

4. Learning R - Richard Cotton

5. Practical Common Lisp - Peter Seibel

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mindcrimeJun 2015

Nominally, I'm "reading" 23 books that are in my Goodreads "currently reading" shelf. But of the ones that I'm really working on and will finish fairly soon:

1. Secret Societies - John Lawrence Reynolds

2. Black Wings of Cthulhu 3 - S.T. John (ed)

3. Unleash The Warrior Within - Richard Machowicz

4. Data Crush - Christopher Surdak

5. Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

6. The Glass Cage: Automation and Us - Nicholas Carr

7. Future Shock - Alvin Toffler

8. The Balanced Scorecard - Robert S. Kaplan

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