The Well-Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage

Appendix B. A Business Cycle Primer

“Recessions teach companies to be prepared even during the good times, because a recession is like a battle—when you’re in it, it’s almost too late to start training for it; if you’re not prepared for it, you will pay for it.”

—Leonard Jaskol, former chairman and CEO,Lydall, Inc.

I purposely avoided any technical discussion of the business cycle in the main body of this book for two reasons. First, I did not want to bore anyone already familiar with business cycle basics. Second, I did not want to bog down any nontechnical readers with unnecessary narrative weight.

In this appendix, however, I now offer a brief business cycle primer. The two main questions we want to address are as follows:

1. What exactly ...