Two other people round out the creative team behind "What Is Strategy?" It is, after all, "an illustrated guide," and Emile Holmewood is responsible for the visuals. He's an award-winning illustrator known for his ability to help people grasp ideas through imagery. Then there's Heinrich Zimmermann – a strategic consultant who devised the concept of the book and assembled the team behind it.

Together, they've deconstructed Michael Porter's ideas and reassembled them for this lively, succinct book. Almost anyone in business could benefit from it – seasoned strategists and fresh-faced newbies alike, though it may be surplus to requirements if you're already familiar with Porter's work.

So, keep listening to find out why being the best is rarely the right strategy, why strategy involves making some customers unhappy, and how first impressions about a book can be proved wrong.

The striking cover of "What Is Strategy?" shows a monkey on drums and a marching squirrel wearing a hat. There's a panda, a bull, and other animals too. So, at first sight, it looks like a children's book, not something suitable for a Mind Tools Book Insight.

But the cartoon figure of Michael Porter, standing with the animals and carrying a banner bearing the words "What Is Strategy?" suggest that no, this is in fact a business book.

There's no getting away from the fact that it's an unusual kind of business book. It's a large-format graphic novel of just over 70 pages that does away with the typical textbook structures of sections and chapters in favor of a storyboard approach, featuring our furry friends from the cover.

Graphic novels and business strategy do seem unlikely bedfellows, and we were skeptical at first. But "What Is Strategy?" is just the latest entry in a growing list of business books in this format. Graphic novels have a didactic tradition of their own that comes alive in a straightforward show-and-tell way. Some people are understandably wary of them, but we think it's definitely worth persevering for the short amount of time it takes to read this book.

The table of contents divides the book into halves – the first focused on competition and the second on strategy. But once you dive in, the book flows as one seamless succession of pages, and you barely notice any divisions. For instance, you'd need a sharp eye to spot where the introduction ends and the meat of the book begins.

This means that it works best to read the book from start to finish, instead of dipping in and out. This is easy because it's short. It doesn't demand a huge investment of time. In fact, we read it from cover to cover in a couple of hours.

It's worth pausing to read the author's note on page two. It's easy to miss, but it explains the conventions that give the book flow, sequence and structure. There's nothing complicated here, and it helps to know what to expect, like what the colors and shapes mean.

The novel gets underway with 10 pages of introduction. These transport you to the corridors of Acorn Enterprises, a fictional company led by an executive team of six animals. The author gives you insights into each animal's persona and role in the company, as they follow their CEO into the boardroom.

Once inside, he drops a bombshell. Company growth has slowed and shareholders are unhappy. If the executives can't come up with a strategy to get Acorn moving again, there won't be any bonuses this year.

The CEO encourages them to be creative, but the executives bicker. They're nervous, and there's no direction or consensus. They do come up with a jumble of ideas, but Michael Porter soon drops in to burst their bubble.

It's here that the lessons begin.

The executives learn from Porter that they have the wrong mindset, seeing competition as a race to be the best. They've set themselves the wrong goals, prioritizing size over profitability, and they've confused aspirations with strategy.

Essentially, they think they've got a strategy when really, they haven't.

It's a damning verdict, but the animals aren't the first to have made a hash of strategic planning. Plenty of real-world companies make these very mistakes.

Now the animals know what strategy isn't, Porter tells them what it is. He says strategy is the choices you make to outperform other organizations by setting yourself apart from them. He calls this definition competitive strategy to distinguish it from corporate strategy, which is a set of strategies for competing across different industries. It's competitive strategy that he focuses on throughout the book, and it's what we mean by "strategy" from now onward.

The next few pages expand on the executives' mistakes. One worth returning to is the importance of having the right mindset . Porter's advice is for the animals to set themselves apart with products or services that are unique or distinctive, rather than aiming to be "the best." He illustrates his point with some ingenious analogies.

In sport, for instance, teams have to be the fittest and most skilled to win. But business is different. Organizations that compete like sports teams to be the best target the same customers with identical products and services. Price is the only distinguishing factor, so the competition becomes a race to the bottom. Prices sink lower, margins drop, and quality suffers. Ultimately, no one wins.

Compare that to the performing arts. Artists don't become successful by imitating others or by crushing the opposition. They succeed through being creative and unique, attracting their own audiences and contributing to a robust overall arts scene. Organizations that follow their example have the right mindset about strategy. They encourage healthy competition, where multiple organizations can win and sustain one another.

Further on, the author turns to the first business model in the book. Porter's Five Forces is one of the most highly regarded strategic management frameworks ever devised. It's a tool for understanding the competitive forces within an industry, and is a great starting point for creating strategies that maximize profitability.

The book distils the Five Forces to their basics with a few simple diagrams, and a worked example that offers powerful insights into how the animals can shift the economics in their environment in their favor.

You can read more about Porter's Five Forces on the Mind Tools site.

After covering the essentials of competition, Porter moves on to a bit more theory. This time, it's competitive advantage and the value chain – another of Michael Porter's ideas that you can read about on Mind Tools.

A value chain is a set of activities that an organization performs to create value for its customers. Analyzing how their organization does this, and seeking ways to add value, are crucial tasks for the executives in developing a competitive strategy. The more value they can create, the more they will become measurably better at something than their rivals. That's competitive advantage.

"What Is Strategy?" explains these concepts simply and clearly. The author uses the example of the auto industry to show how value can be created. This brings the ideas to life, and encourages us to think about how we could tailor our own value chains to create competitive advantage.

Back to the story, and the animals are given five tests that only the best competitive strategies can pass.

The first two tests look at value propositions and value chains in greater depth, and the third is about trade-offs. This is an interesting one, because trade-offs mean making hard choices about the customers you want to serve, and your product or service. It means saying "no" to some people and deliberately targeting others.

Sticking with the trade-offs you make will sustain your competitive advantage, and keep your strategy clear and undiluted. This isn't to say you can't innovate or be radical. In fact, Porter draws the animal executives' attention to IKEA's successful trade-off between selling assembled furniture and flat-packs, that customers have to put together at home. It's as much about what you're not going to do as what you are going to do – and not trying to be all things to all people. This is crucial, mind-changing stuff.

So far, the lessons have been about making trade-offs, tailoring your value chain, and developing unique propositions. So, it comes as a surprise that the fifth test is continuity. Delve deeper, though, and Porter's reasoning becomes clear.

He argues that continuity is vital in an ever-changing world. But that's not to say organizations should stand still. Porter certainly advocates innovation, but at the same time, you need to retain a core value proposition that is stable. If companies can get better at what they do without diluting their value propositions, Porter says, their success will endure.

From the first pages of the book, we've followed our animal executives through the twists and turns of learning strategy. Porter has corrected and cajoled them whenever they've stumbled, and encouraged them when his lessons click into place.

By the time he leaves at the end of the book, they've developed a firm grasp of what strategy is, and they're ready to start again to deliver what the CEO wants. On his way out, Porter leaves the executives – and us – with some signposts to other resources for more detail, and a list of core concepts.

So, what's our verdict on "What Is Strategy?" We think this is a fantastic book. It's informative, stimulating and, in its own cartoonish way, beautifully illustrated. It's chatty, unstuffy and fun, and its simplicity is its strength. But this doesn't mean it's in any sense woolly or childish. It manages to be "crunchy" and theoretical while staying concise and accessible.

The author clearly knows her subject and she adds to the dialogue of the story with real-world examples and case studies from commercial heavyweights like General Motors and Zara.

She demystifies Porter's ideas with elegance and precision, distilling them to their simplest form and providing just enough information for readers to grasp the fundamentals. Instead of drowning in theory, you'll come away with a good understanding of some classic Michael Porter frameworks. That's no small feat.

So, despite our initial skepticism, this book really works, and not just for newcomers. Even experienced strategists might be convinced to rethink their ways after reading these pages.

We admit that the format and the cast of cuddly characters won't be for everyone. Business parables, comics, and photo-novels may be popular, but there'll inevitably be some who balk at the idea of buying this book. On balance, though, we feel the creative team behind "What Is Strategy?" has done us a huge favor. They engage readers, and invite us to interact – drawing us into the story, instead of frog-marching us through pages of text.

In this way, they've adopted Porter's trade-off test: choosing their customers and identifying the needs they want to fulfill. Most obviously, this book serves visual learners and the time-poor. But at least one study has concluded that graphic novels might be more effective teaching tools than traditional textbooks. So, anyone who's happy to try the format could benefit from it.

By cutting out all the noise around strategy, the team behind this book intensify the focus on its takeaway points. These may be few in number, but each one is crucial, and the book leaves readers with no work to do in extracting them. They're right there on the page – clearly flagged and impossible to miss.

The book does lack deep detail, but it's not intended as a comprehensive textbook. If deep detail is what you're after, the book helpfully signposts you towards titles that can deliver it.

If we had to criticize one element of the book it would be its slightly forced humor. But then, humor is so personal that you may disagree. And the jokes aren't rife. They entertain, rather than distract.

So, for all these reasons, we heartily recommend this book.

"What Is Strategy? An Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter" is written by Joan Magretta, illustrated by Emile Holmewood, conceived by Heinrich Zimmermann, and published by Harvard Business Review Press.

That's the end of this episode of Mind Tools Book Insights. Thanks for listening.