THERE IS A NEW TRUTH ABOUT BUSINESS STRATEGY: HE WHO MAKES THE RULES MAKES THE MONEY

A few savvy executives understand a vital but hidden truth about business in fiercely competitive markets: Making the rules of the game means the difference between winning and losing.

• Bill Gates has known this since he was nineteen, when he personally drafted his first licensing contract for a start-up company called Microsoft.
• Henry Ford learned it the hard way in the early days of the automobile industry when a powerful industry cartel tried to drive him out of business with a bogus patent.
• Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch are both masters of this truth—and have led Viacom and News Corporation to sustained competitive success as a result. They are as comfortable in a courtroom as they are in a boardroom.
• Napster founder Shawn Fanning learned the lesson too late, only after incumbent recording companies in the music business had driven him from the market.

G. Richard Shell, an award-winning professor at one of the world’s leading business schools, brings the strategic insights of leaders like Gates, Ford, Redstone, and Murdoch into bold relief. Using stories drawn from both today’s headlines and business history’s rich treasure trove, he shows exactly how to make the rules in your market and how to defend your interests when rivals beat you to it. What kind of rules? The rules that executives negotiate into contracts, lobby into new laws, litigate into court decisions, and persuade bureaucrats to write into regulatory standards.