The Hunters and Hunted
The Hunters and the hunted written by James B. Swartz is a non-fictional business novel with deep technological management and engineering themes. Published in 1996, this book contains a mixture of successful management methods that are applicable in the real world situation and fictitious, invented characters that supersede time in a quest to engage the reader in unrealistic but relevant dialog.
Swartz starts by illustrating his need to discover the perfect solution to America’s productivity problems, which led him on a journey to test each method and experiment with elements in a bid to produce the ultimate methodology that would succeed. Dropping his work at Delco Electronics where he had cut a niche for himself as an inventor, Swartz embarked on an intensive knowledge-seeking adventure in which he rubbed shoulders with most top-level management in numerous American firms, challenging them to innovate newer, faster and better ways of managing their production. The first part of the book focuses on characteristics of firms, states and individuals being hunted. It has illustrations like business deals with the Japanese and Korean electronic firms all the while clearly stating the flaws and mistakes that management do for example chasing low cost labor, selling out the rights to advanced innovations to the rivals, adopting compromises and negotiations by managers. He then embarks on a short history that describes the transition in regional economic dominance from the Netherlands to England and finally the USA, explaining in turn how each state prospered and how they all plummeted.
In the following chapters, the dominant themes include strategies for turning around the status quo to enable firms to become the hunters by responding faster, becoming more innovative and producing higher quality goods and services, James Swartz elaborates how businesses that were hunted transformed into the hunters as well as the hunters and their tactics and strategies for survival. He also introduces the ides of the No-Linear Solution. The rest of the book consists of imagined dialogues between Marcus, an imaginary manager who has had lots of experience in rescuing collapsing, troubled firms for 1400 years and Lou, a steel company manager who worked for many years in the same firm. Laura, a Harvard graduate still fresh from campus and having no work experience is also in the conversation, as they delve into the managerial world, seeking out distressed firms and assisting them to re-discover their faulty design systems ,corporate mindsets , attitudes and stereotypes. Lou is taken to his former workplace at the Continental steel factory, only to find it in shambles, no production, no staff and no management and where his former workmate, Stan gives him the reasons why the company went under. Through such tours, Lou and Laura achieve a lot in terms of changing the overall perspective of American merchants, business owners, managers and the public.
In an overview, James B. Swartz goes to great lengths to achieve the following in his book The Hunters and the Hunted. One, he brings out his own story ,step by step, from his former workplace in an electronics shop to quitting in order to seek new answers to management process, his journey across a myriad of firms and their related controversies involving stranded think tanks and staff desperate for quick-fix solutions to their deteriorating states. Secondly, through his imagined characters, Lou and Laura, Swartz uses the book to take the readers on a tour of specific firms with specific problems, engaging us in important but sometimes mindless banter among the two interns and their supervisor Marcus. Finally, The Hunters and the Hunted provides managers, businesspersons, investors and business students with a realistic approach toward tackling business problems including developing an eye for the actual occurrence of change in economies and other skills. The Hunters and the Hunted is a definite must-read for anyone interested in getting a different view on global economics as well as entrepreneurship insight.
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