The Pursuit of High Stakes Business: Competitive Discipline Behind Proposals That Win

PRAISE FOR THE PURSUIT OF HIGH-STAKES BUSINESS “Whether you compete for defense contracts, enterprise transformations, technology programs, or major outsourcing deals, The Pursuit of High-Stakes Business delivers a powerful message: winning is engineered through disciplined choices, coherent commitments, and leadership alignment—not heroic proposal efforts at the end.” —RICHARD F. AMBROSE, Former Executive Vice President, Lockheed Martin Space, and Officer, Lockheed Martin Corporation “Few people understand both sides of high-stakes acquisition competition—the government’s evaluative burden and industry’s pursuit challenges. The Pursuit of High-Stakes Business bridges that gap exceptionally well. Patel and his coauthors explain how credibility is actually formed during evaluation: through coherence, traceability, disciplined trade-offs, and commitments that survive scrutiny. This book should be read by defense executives, acquisition leaders, and anyone responsible for shaping consequential national security programs.” —JOHN C. ROOD, CEO of Momentus Space, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and Former Senior Vice President of Lockheed Martin International “I especially like the line in Chapter 10, ‘Winning occasionally is an event, winning ­consistently is an enterprise asset.’ It raises some interesting issues like industrial base, for instance, if you think about Lockheed winning the F-22 immediately followed by F-35. Sometimes the winning margin needs to be more significant to overcome political arguments. That margin can only come with superior fact-based storytelling in the proposal process and customer recognition that the margin is validated.” —TOM BURBAGE, Former Executive Vice President and General Manager, Lockheed Martin Corporation; leader of the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programs “What makes this book powerful is that it mirrors how source selection evaluators think. For decades, companies have treated capture and proposal development as separate functions. The Pursuit of High-Stakes Business dismantles that model and replaces it with a structured, disciplined framework that links strategy, architecture, leadership, and execution into a coherent enterprise system. It’s a manual for winners.” —J. DAVID PATTERSON, Former Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense An up-to-date and expert strategy guide for winning high-value competitive programs In The Pursuit of High-Stakes Business: The Competitive Discipline Behind Proposals That Win, three members of the senior leadership team at SMA, Inc. – the leading advisor for companies seeking large contracts in the defense, aerospace, and B2B sectors – deliver a detailed strategy guide for organizations engaged in the unforgiving, high-stakes process of winning large-scale competitive programs. The authors provide a revolutionary new manual for succeeding in these competitions, one that eschews the usual sales narrative and relies instead on a granular application of systems engineering, agile execution, and strategy-informed storytelling. The book is a masterclass and practical toolkit for architecting strategies that create credible advantages and align technical, cost, and schedule strategies with integrated program architecture. You’ll learn to avoid common pitfalls that torpedo promising initiatives and embrace techniques that are consistently successful in the face of ferocious competition. Inside the book: A deeply informed, step-by-step manual based on SMA’s Program Lifecycle Body of Knowledge A collection of real-world case studies and the practical lessons you can draw from each of them Specific strategies to prepare for the next RFP before you receive it Perfect for executives, capture leaders, and proposal professionals, The Pursuitof High-Stakes Business is a must-have walkthrough for everyone involved in pursuing high-value, competitive contracts in an increasingly crowded market.

Pagina's: 240, Editie: Eerste editie, Hardcover, Wiley