Leg 1. Understanding Core Business. Part IV. Vestas 11th Hour Racing won!.
Dear All:
“Vestas 11th Hour Racing has won Leg 1 of the Volvo Ocean Race, crossing the finish line in the River Tagus in Lisbon, Portugal on Saturday afternoon”. Congratulations! Mapfre team has just arrived second place. And it seems Dongfeng Team will be third. But this is just the first leg of this race journey. There are 10 more legs to go.
Leg 2 from Lisbon to Cape Town will start next Sunday 5th of November. Leg 2 is 7 times longest than Leg 1. The teams will sail 7,000 nautical miles. In my side, I will start with the following theme: Segmentation Analysis as of next Sunday too.
This coming week I will like to share a couple of value-added topics in relation to the flow of “core business”. I will like to bring up some ideas around the last books written by Chris Zook from Bain & Company. Twelve years ago, I found Doctor Zook books as a gift. 
A friend who worked for AVIANCA Group (former TACA) gave me 2 books of Doctor Zook as an endowment. What a beautiful present were those two books for me. You have no idea how happy I was with those precious books then. That was the first time I had Zook books in my hands. Doctor Zook has continued writing since then. What I like from Doctor Zook materials is his simplicity in sharing his ideas. He has proven with evidence and extensive research around the “core business” concept, about how companies fail, succeed and re-emerge given the external conditions of global turbulence, and several different contexts in which companies operate. 
I wish I could have worked for Doctor Zook in the past. In the year 2001, after I returned from Zurich, one of my dreams was to work for BAIN in the USA. But it did not happen. I would have been so happy if at least I could have worked some years in BAIN. But life set me up in El Salvador against my wishes, and I have tried to keep myself on track and actualized in everything I do from this remote and tropical land. I apologize sincerely if you see some old information about strategy every once and a while, but I do it on purpose. Many strategists have given us gifts of knowledge, and they deserve to be named on my blog.
Doctor Zook would have been a wonderful “Dutch” Master and Professor for me. But I am still learning, and I hope he can continue sharing his “plus belles oeuvres” of knowledge for several years.
See you next week.
Note: All the pictures and videos shown on this blog do not belong to me. I do not own any of the lovely photos posted unless otherwise stated.
Eleonora Escalante Strategy 