Book excerpt: Most companies ignore one of their best opportunities for honing competitive advantage: the opportunity to proactively manage business cycles and macroeconomic turbulence. Despite the profound impact that the business cycle has on the fortunes and fate of so many businesses large and small--and the employees and investors that depend on them--not fa single book offers a comprehensive guide to strategically and tactically managing the business cycle. The Well-Timed Strategy shows how to manage not just the business cycle and industry cycles but also today's unprecedented level of macroeconomic turbulence. Peter Navarro shows how to align every facet of business strategy, tactics, and operations to reflect changing business conditions. Drawing on hundreds of examples, Navarro distills clear, simple management principles for managing economic upswings and downswings. Navarro addresses everything from inventory, production, and supply chain management to marketing, pricing, and long-term capital investment. Navarro presents examples from around the globe, ranging from Broadcom and Cemex to Paccar and Xilinx Chinese real estate developers to U.S. small caps. Clear, concise, and exceptionally readable, The Well-Timed Strategy makes complex macroeconomic forecasting easy to understand -- and even easier to act upon. Publisher's note - in this book various quotes and viewpoints are attributed to a 'Ron Vara'. Ron Vara is not an actual person, but rather an alias created by Peter Navarro in order to present his views and opinions.