"To what extent can we draw generalizations on business strategy from anecdotal narratives of successful corporations and hagiologies of their leaders? This is the troubling question I was left with after reading Shashank Shah’s book; a study of six Indian ‘win-win corporations’ (WWCs). This lucidly written book, however, gave me a peek into the decision-making processes of top management, particularly in the Indian context. [...] To determine the causative factors contributing to his broadly defined criteria of success that includes both shareholders and stakeholders, Shah presents for each corporation the background information of the industry followed by a more detailed analysis of strategies adopted to deal with complex and challenging situations based on discussions with their top management, finally drawing a one-page statement of win-win learnings from each case. In the final chapter, entitled ‘Reflections’, Shah compiles a meta-summary of these learnings with a set of strategies categorized by shareholder and stakeholder that reveals ‘how to become a win-win corporation’ [...] At the half-way mark, in spite of the diversity in the cases, a pattern begins to emerge in the narrative: the search by companies for competitive advantage and the role of senior management in achieving it. [...] To extend the scope of winners to include stakeholders, he consistently adds how top management of these corporations has always invested in employees
and on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Unfortunately, while relations with trade unions have been ignored in the book, CSR in India remains peripheral to most businesses and has limited credibility amongst stakeholders. A statement from top management on CSR is clearly inadequate to judge its actual impact at the grassroots.

"This book adds considerable value to the bleak storehouse of contemporary Indian management literature. All inputs are authentic. There are no assumptions and conjectures. Every single attributed quotation, statement and datum carries an endnote. There are hundreds of them, neatly and methodically indexed chapter wise to provide a gold mine of reference material for researchers in subjects related to management. [...] The six companies or corporate groups conferred 'win-win' status by Shah are HDFC Bank, Larsen and Toubro Construction, The Taj Group of Hotels, Hindustan Unilever, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and TVS Motor Company. In a series of short but in-depth analyses, Shah justifies why these corporates are worth inclusion. In addition, he provides a one-page appendix entitled “Implementation Toolkit”, which comprises a list of suggested best practices distilled from workings of these six companies."