Advantage Play: The Manager's Guide to Creative Problem Solving

Robert W. Sexty is a professor of commerce and business administration
at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the author of Canadian
Business: Issues and Stakeholders.

This book examines a management strategy called “advantage play,”
defined by the author as “a player with an effective and legal
advantage over the competition” or a creative problem solver. Ben’s
approach to managerial problem solving may be couched in new jargon, but
it treads the same ground as countless other management books. Among the
book’s prescriptions: “Success is 10 percent inspiration, 10 percent
perspiration and 80 percent preparation”; “Do not predict the
future, make it happen.”

Advantage Player is typical of its genre: relatively short, small
format, large type, and an abundance of point-form lists. The book’s
focus on helping managers to make the impossible happen is of dubious
value at a time when questionable practices are surfacing in
corporations such as Enron, Worldcom, Vivendi, Tyco, and Adelphia, to
name just a few. In this environment, management practices based on
manipulation and trickery appear inappropriate even if done within legal
requirements.