Competitive Advantage

Competitive Advantage
Author: Michael E. Porter
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2008-06-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1416595848

Now beyond its eleventh printing and translated into twelve languages, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations has changed completely our conception of how prosperity is created and sustained in the modern global economy. Porter’s groundbreaking study of international competitiveness has shaped national policy in countries around the world. It has also transformed thinking and action in states, cities, companies, and even entire regions such as Central America. Based on research in ten leading trading nations, The Competitive Advantage of Nations offers the first theory of competitiveness based on the causes of the productivity with which companies compete. Porter shows how traditional comparative advantages such as natural resources and pools of labor have been superseded as sources of prosperity, and how broad macroeconomic accounts of competitiveness are insufficient. The book introduces Porter’s “diamond,” a whole new way to understand the competitive position of a nation (or other locations) in global competition that is now an integral part of international business thinking. Porter's concept of “clusters,” or groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and institutions that arise in particular locations, has become a new way for companies and governments to think about economies, assess the competitive advantage of locations, and set public policy. Even before publication of the book, Porter’s theory had guided national reassessments in New Zealand and elsewhere. His ideas and personal involvement have shaped strategy in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Portugal, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and India, and regions such as Massachusetts, California, and the Basque country. Hundreds of cluster initiatives have flourished throughout the world. In an era of intensifying global competition, this pathbreaking book on the new wealth of nations has become the standard by which all future work must be measured.

The End of Competitive Advantage

The End of Competitive Advantage
Author: Rita Gunther McGrath
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2013-05-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1422191419

Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business? Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now. In short, strategy is stuck. Most leaders are using frameworks that were designed for a different era of business and based on a single dominant idea—that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Once the premise on which all strategies were built, this idea is increasingly irrelevant. Now, Columbia Business School professor and globally recognized strategy expert Rita Gunther McGrath argues that it’s time to go beyond the very concept of sustainable competitive advantage. Instead, organizations need to forge a new path to winning: capturing opportunities fast, exploiting them decisively, and moving on even before they are exhausted. She shows how to do this with a new set of practices based on the notion of transient competitive advantage. This book serves as a new playbook for strategy, one based on updated assumptions about how the world works, and shows how some of the world’s most successful companies use this method to compete and win today. Filled with compelling examples from “growth outlier” firms such as Fujifilm, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Infosys, Yahoo! Japan, and Atmos Energy, The End of Competitive Advantage is your guide to renewed success and profitable growth in an economy increasingly defined by transient advantage.

Competitive Strategy

Competitive Strategy
Author: Michael E. Porter
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Total Pages: 396
Release: 1998
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780684005775

In this pathbreaking book, Michael E. Porter unravels the rules that govern competition and turns them into powerful analytical tools to help management interpret market signals and forecast the direction of industry development.

Creating Competitive Advantage

Creating Competitive Advantage
Author: Jaynie L. Smith
Publisher: Crown Currency
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2006-04-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0385518447

Why should I do business with you… and not your competitor? Whether you are a retailer, manufacturer, distributor, or service provider – if you cannot answer this question, you are surely losing customers, clients and market share. This eye-opening book reveals how identifying your competitive advantages and trumpeting them to the marketplace is the most surefire way to close deals, retain clients, and stay miles ahead of the competition. The five fatal flaws of most companies: ? They don’t have a competitive advantage but think they do ? They have a competitive advantage but don’t know what it is—so they lower prices instead ? They know what their competitive advantage is but neglect to tell clients about it ? They mistake “strengths” for competitive advantages ? They don’t concentrate on competitive advantages when making strategic and operational decisions The good news is that you can overcome these costly mistakes – by identifying your competitive advantages and creating new ones. Consultant, public speaker, and competitive advantage expert Jaynie Smith will show you how scores of small and large companies substantially increased their sales by focusing on their competitive advantages. When advising a CEO frustrated by his salespeople’s inability to close deals, Smith discovered that his company stayed on schedule 95 percent of the time – an achievement no one else in his industry could claim. By touting this and other competitive advantages to customers, closing rates increased by 30 percent—and so did company revenues. Jack Welch has said, “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” This straight-to-the-point book is filled with insightful stories and specific steps on how to pinpoint your competitive advantages, develop new ones, and get the message out about them. “The biggest marketing flaw in most companies is their failure to fully reap the benefits of their competitive advantages. Either they think they have a competitive advantage but don’t. Or they have one and don’t realize it. Or they know they have a strong competitive advantage but fail to promote it adequately to their customers and prospects. “In my research with middle-market companies, I found only two CEOs out of 1,000 who could clearly name their companies’ competitive advantages. The other 99.8 percent could offer only vague, imprecise generalities. These same CEOs often rely on outside consultants to guide strategic-planning sessions. Yet, in my experience, very few consultants – even seasoned ones – give competitive advantage evaluation more than a superficial glance…. “Ignoring your competitive advantages can be an expensive and even fatal mistake. Because no matter the size of your company or the kind of business you are in, your competitive advantages should be the foundation of all your strategic and operational decisions. They’re the reasons customers choose to buy from you instead of the other guy.” – From Creating Competitive Advantage

Competition Demystified

Competition Demystified
Author: Bruce C. Greenwald
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 651
Release: 2005-08-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1101218436

Bruce Greenwald, one of the nation's leading business professors, presents a new and simplified approach to strategy that cuts through much of the fog that has surrounded the subject. Based on his hugely popular course at Columbia Business School, Greenwald and his coauthor, Judd Kahn, offer an easy-to-follow method for understanding the competitive structure of your industry and developing an appropriate strategy for your specific position. Over the last two decades, the conventional approach to strategy has become frustratingly complex. It's easy to get lost in a sophisticated model of your competitors, suppliers, buyers, substitutes, and other players, while losing sight of the big question: Are there barriers to entry that allow you to do things that other firms cannot?

Beyond Competitive Advantage

Beyond Competitive Advantage
Author: Todd Zenger
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2016-05-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1633690016

A competitive advantage just isn't enough. Your company is turning in regular profits every year, and its market share is only getting bigger. Competitors can’t touch you. So why is your stock price so sluggish? The answer is as simple as it is cruel: investors aren’t interested in history, and they already know you’re profitable and competitive—that knowledge is baked into your stock price. The hard reality is that a competitive advantage just isn’t enough. Investors want companies to surprise them with unexpected value, which means that you can outperform market expectations only if you as a leader know how to find, create, and deliver a series of multiple competitive advantages. This is why a corporate theory is so important. A good corporate theory provides a compass for those at the strategic helm, guiding their decisions about what assets and activities to pursue, what investments to make, and what strategies to adopt. Behind every long-term corporate success story lies a basic theory about how that company creates value. In Beyond Competitive Advantage, strategy professor Todd Zenger describes what makes a great corporate theory and helps readers understand the many tensions and trade-offs they’ll face as they apply the theory to meet the challenge of market expectations. Based on years of research and analysis, Beyond Competitive Advantage provides managers and executives with a framework for both sustaining value and creating growth.

The Future of Competitive Strategy

The Future of Competitive Strategy
Author: Mohan Subramaniam
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2022-08-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262046997

How legacy firms can combine their traditional strengths with the power of data and digital ecosystems to forge a new competitive strategy for the digital era. How can legacy firms remain relevant in the digital era? In The Future of Competitive Strategy, strategic management expert Mohan Subramaniam explains how firms can leverage both their traditional strengths and the modern-day power of data and digital ecosystems to forge a new competitive strategy. Drawing on the experiences of a range of companies, including Caterpillar, Sleep Number, and Whirlpool, he explains how firms can benefit from data’s enlarged role in modern business, develop digital ecosystems tailored to their unique business needs, and use new frameworks to harness the power of data for competitive advantage. Subramaniam presents digital ecosystems as a combination of production and consumption ecosystems, which can be used by legacy firms to unlock the value of data at various levels—from improving operational efficiencies to creating new data-driven services and transforming traditional products into digital platforms. He explores the ways sensors and the Internet of Things provide new kinds of customer data; presents the concept of digital competitors—other firms that have access to similar data; discusses the new digital capabilities that firms need to develop; and addresses privacy and security issues associated with data sharing. Who needs this book? Any firm that wants to revitalize traditional business models, offer a richer customer experience, and expand its competitive arena into new digital ecosystems.

Competitive Advantage in Investing

Competitive Advantage in Investing
Author: Steven Abrahams
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 111961984X

Links theory and practice for investment professionals and portfolio managers, demonstrating why some portfolios consistently perform better than others Investing well, like any other business, depends on competitive advantage. Some portfolios reliably generate greater returns than others because they simply are better positioned to benefit from strengths and avoid weaknesses. Building and using competitive advantage becomes central to the daily work of the best mutual funds, hedge funds, banks, insurers and virtually every other type of portfolio. But competitive advantage commonly is overlooked in most written work for investment professionals. The literature often varies between abstract formal treatments and pragmatic workbooks with little in between. Competitive Advantage in Investing fills the gap by integrating modern portfolio theory with actual practice in one comprehensive volume. This innovative book guides investment professionals on building and sustaining competitive advantage and helps policymakers and researchers apply theory in a wide range of practical settings. Author Steven Abrahams—Senior Managing Director at Amherst Pierpont Securities and former Adjunct Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School—draws from his experience in both academic theory and real-life strategic investing to bridge the two worlds. This valuable resource: Connects the formal literature on investing to the actual work of most institutional portfolio managers Examines core strengths and weaknesses that drive portfolio behavior at mutual and hedge funds, banks and insurers, at other institutions and for individuals Demonstrates how linking portfolio theory and practice can increase competitive advantage Offers a robust description of investing, markets, and asset value Competitive Advantage in Investing: Building Winning Professional Portfolios is a must-have book for any investment professional, policymaker, or researcher.

Connected Strategy

Connected Strategy
Author: Nicolaj Siggelkow
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1633697010

Business Models for Transforming Customer Relationships What if there were a way to turn occasional, sporadic transactions with customers into long-term, continuous relationships--while simultaneously driving dramatic improvements in operational efficiency? What if you could break your existing trade-offs between superior customer experience and low cost? This is the promise of a connected strategy. New forms of connectivity--involving frequent, low-friction, customized interactions--mean that companies can now anticipate customer needs as they arise, or even before. Simultaneously, enabled by these technologies, companies can create new business models that deliver more value to customers. Connected strategies are win-win: Customers get a dramatically improved experience, while companies boost operational efficiency. In this book, strategy and operations experts Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch reveal the emergence of connected strategies as a new source of competitive advantage. With in-depth examples from companies operating in industries such as healthcare, financial services, mobility, retail, entertainment, nonprofit, and education, Connected Strategy identifies the four pathways--respond-to-desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution--for turning episodic interactions into continuous relationships. The authors show how each pathway creates a competitive advantage, then guide you through the critical decisions for creating and implementing your own connected strategies. Whether you're trying to revitalize strategy in an established company or disrupt an industry as a startup, this book will help you: Reshape your connections with your customers Find new ways to connect with existing suppliers while also activating new sources of capacity Create the right revenue model Make the best technology choices to support your strategy Integrating rich examples, how-to advice, and practical tools in the form of "workshop chapters" throughout, this book is the ultimate resource for creating competitive advantage through connected relationships with your customers and redefined connections in your industry.