J. Kay, former professor of Business Strategy at the London Business School and former director of the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, would likely be skeptical about the proposed merger of National Bank with Alpha Bank and would probably have predicted its eventual cancellation.

As he thoroughly analyzes in this excellent book, mergers and acquisitions often fail because their proponents are driven by the fantasy of growth (the bigger, the better) rather than the criterion of adding value to their businesses.

As simple as the secret of corporate success is, Kay says, so difficult is its application in practice: the sustained competitive advantage of a business comes from creating a few distinctive capabilities in the way it operates in specific markets.

Distinctive capabilities are formed through the development of a distinct architecture: they are built upon a web of stable and ongoing relationships that are formed within the business by the various parts that make it up, as well as a network of relationships that the business establishes and cultivates with those it interacts with in its environment.

Successful companies, such as BMW, Glaxo, Honda, and IBM, have managed to create, throughout their historical journey, a distinct identity that provides them with coherence, helps in the development of intellectual capital, encourages dense exchanges of information and experiences internally, and supports continuous adaptability.

In this book, we see all the characteristics that made Kay's biweekly column in the Financial Times so popular: analytical power, frequent reference to examples of real companies, high accessibility, and continuous interest for the reader thanks to the friendly and comprehensible language.