Competition Demystified: A Radically Simplified Approach to Business Strategy

by Bruce C. Greenwald, Judd Kahn

Overview

In the highly competitive world of business, understanding the dynamics of strategy is the key to success.

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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591841807
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/28/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Bruce Greenwald is the Robert Heilbrun Professor of Economics at Columbia University Business School, where his class on strategy draws standing-room-only crowds.

Editorial Reviews

"In the best of the strategy books now or soon to be in stores, [Greenwald] has proposed a fairly straightforward way to think about strategy that makes the subject substantially simpler." —The New York Times

"Case studies and sharp analysis make this a book worth pondering. . . . They make a compelling case." —BusinessWeek

"Superb, with a deft balance between theory and case studies that offer fascinating explanations of strategic adventures by prominent companies." —The Toronto Globe and Mail

"Congratulations.  Your business is a success.  Now is when you really need this book. Greenwald and Kahn are unique in their focus on building and protecting value even as others try to copy your special saude (or formula).  Their approach to competitive strategy is a masterly success and, true to their own insight, is one that can't be beat, now or in the future."  —Barry Nalebuff, Yale University, author of Why Not? and Co-Opetition

"The best 'course' I've ever read on strategic management.  Actually does demystify a complex world of management."  —Warren Bennis, Distibguished Professor of Business, USC; author of Becoming a Leader

From the Publisher

A conscious simplification of Michael Porter's classic Competitive Strategy, this book treats only one of Porter's five forces, "potential entrants." According to the authors (Value Investing), avoiding competition is the only way to escape "a level playing field in which anyone can join... [and] only the best... survive and prosper." Most of the book discusses ways to gain protected positions from which businesses can be run badly but still earn abnormal returns. Cutting prices, matching prices and using domination of one market to create a monopoly in another are all discussed; legality is mentioned only briefly and indirectly. The best of their recommendations is to find small, declining, local markets without existing competitors. Despite the title, the book seems aimed more at investors than managers. Stockholders appreciate the value of mediocre companies that generate steady, unexciting profits in local markets without much notice; they like them because the stock is cheap. Managers usually aspire to build something better, in order to make the stock expensive. Still, this book is a useful counterpoint to the idea that conflict and growth are good for their own sakes. (Aug. 18) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly