redundant -- go back to the article

The book rehashes the article for an extra couple hundred pages. I've got this book on the shelf, but when I want to talk about the Balanced Score Card concept, I go back to the article.

tools that support Balanced Scorecard conception?

I'm running a small consulting company and my prior goal was to identify what Balanced Scorecard is and in what way can I suggest it to my existent clients.

I've started learning BSC from "Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System", a Harvard Business Review article by Kaplan and Norton.

The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action is a great book, but it's far away from scorecard success step-by-step.

I've searched with google for Balanced Scorecard and related topics, but there was just "Kaplan and Norton wrote..." or "Our consulting company..." articles. Also, I've found Strategy2Act software, that seems to be a good point to start developing BSc.

My opinion is that it's a great book for every independent consultant. But there are a lot of job to translate this conception into something useful for real company.

For my opinion the good idea to start with is "connect everyone with strategy". It sounds like easy to do, but effective way to start using BSc ideas in company strategy.

Book that spawned a core business approach

This book is a seminal work that has significantly affected the way businesses frame and execute strategy.

In a nutshell, the authors show you how to view your business strategy, drivers and key indicators in four dimensions - financial, external (customer satisfaction), internal (processes) and learning/growth. They then show you how to link these to your strategies and develop and execute plan for transforming them into action and results.

The good and the bad. First, the good - before Kaplan and Norton published this book there was no standardized method for framing and measuring what's important. This book rectifies that. Also, the ideas first introduced have been embraced and extended to the point that a book search of similar titles returns over 2600 hits, and a google search using 'balanced scorecard' as a keyword returns ten time that many. This is a clear indication of how influential this book is and remains eight years after publication. But those are simple statistics. What's important about this book is many of the other resources that have sprang from it assume that you are familiar with the concepts and approach in this book.

The bad - the writing style, as noted by others is ponderous. That does not diminish the concepts and approach. It is also showing its age, but only because of the body of work that this book has inspired, which has greatly extended and refined the basic ideas. You will still need to read this book to get the most out of the body of work that is based upon it. Also note that even Kaplan and Norton, the authors, have extended this work into strategy maps and a 'strategy-focused organization' paradigm.

Overall this book has - and will continue to - influence thinking. The ideas set forth are still evolving and have been embraced by some of the largest (and smallest) companies on the planet. If you are new to this material I recommend visiting Balanced Scorecard Institute (ASIN B00006CKQ2) for introductory information, and Balanced Scorecard Online (ASIN B00006DBZ5) for more detailed material.