Strategic Risk Taking: A Framework for Risk Management

Groundbreaking book that redefines risk in business as potentially powerful strategically to help increase profits.- Get out of the defensive crouch: learn which risks to avoid, which to mitigate, and which to actively exploit. Master risk management techniques that can drive competitive advantage, increase firm value, and enhance growth and profitability. By Dr. Aswath Damodaran, one of the fields top gurus -- known worldwide for his classic guides to corporate finance and valuation. In finance and investing, risk has traditionally been viewed negatively: investors and companies can lose money due to risk, and therefore we typically penalize companies for taking risks. Most books on enterprise risk management focus strictly on hedging or mitigating risk. But the enterprises relationship with risk should be far more nuanced. Great companies become great because they seek out and exploit intelligent risks, not because they avoid all risk. Aswath Damodarans Strategic Risk Taking is the first book to take this broader view, encompassing both risk hedging at one end of the spectrum and strategic risk taking on the other. Damodaran helps readers separate good risk (opportunities) from bad risk (threats), showing how to take advantage of the former while protecting against the latter. He introduces powerful financial tools for evaluating risk, and shows how to draw on other disciplines to make these tools even more effective. Aswath Damodaran is a professor of finance and David Margolis teaching fellow at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He teaches the corporate finance and equity valuation courses in the MBA program. He received his MBA and PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles. His research interests lie in valuation, portfolio management, and applied corporate finance. He has been published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. He has written three books on equity valuation (Damodaran on Valuation, Investment Valuation, and The Dark Side of Valuation) and two on corporate finance (Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice, Applied Corporate Finance: A Users Manual). He has coedited a book on investment management with Peter Bernstein (Investment Management) and has written a book on investment philosophies (Investment Philosophies). His newest book on portfolio management is titled Investment Fables and was published in 2004. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1984 to 1986, where he received the Earl Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award in 1985. He has been at NYU since 1986 and received the Stern School of Business Excellence in Teaching Award (awarded by the graduating class) in 1988, 1991, 1992, 1999, 2001, and 2007, and was the youngest winner of the University-wide Distinguished Teaching Award (in 1990). He was profiled in Business Week as one of the top 12 business school professors in the United States in 1994.