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The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Secrets of Continually Developing a More Profitable Business Model (Hardcover)
by Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles
| Category:
Business, Business model, Innovation, Strategy |
| Market price: ¥ 388.00
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¥ 358.00
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Author: Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Pub. in: March, 2003
ISBN: 1576751678
Pages: 334
Measurements: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00515
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- MSL Picks -
This book does two things: 1) it describes how to achieve and sustain competitive advantage by examining your current business model and refactoring it to take advantage of emergent opportunities or changing business climates, and 2) it teaches you how to think out of the box.
Thinking out of the box is a prerequisite for refactoring your business model, and unlike the plethora of books on this seemingly ineffable topic, this book will provide you with the knowledge and skills to do just that. Excellent example of thinking out of the box are immediately given in the intro- duction - each mini study set in text boxes is anchored to one of more factors in business model innovation, and illustrate how thinking out of the box by individuals led to radically new ways of viewing their business, and the successes that came from acting on these insights. Everyone will find at least one inspiring case study in this book that elicits an Eureka! Mine was the GoldCorp case.
However, case studies - no matter how inspiring - are nothing more than interesting reading without knowing the common critical success factors in detail. This is where the book shines, because these details are exposed, analyzed and the reasons why they are important are given in a compelling way. Part One, which addresses value, cost and price is by far the most influential 114 pages I have read in any book. Most of the techniques can be found in any college-level text book, but the manner in which it's presented, and especially the chapter on eliminating costs that reduce customer and end user benefits, will inspire you to think broadly and deeply about these issues. Part Two covers how to provide sustained benefits to all stake- holders. In theory this seems easy, but too many organizations acknow- ledge the benefits without acting. The authors show you how to transform the theory into action and results. They also tackle the messages in Parts Three (Expand Business Model Innovation) and Four (Pursue Higher- Potential Business Model Improvement) with the same painstaking detail as in the first two parts.
This book has clear, lively writing that will hold your interest from the first page. In fact, it is so well written that you may easily overlook the experience, knowledge and skill that is woven into this excellent book through carefully chosen case studies, key questions that cause you to think, and copious use of text boxes to highlight key points or impart quick pieces of essential information. In that respect not only is this book a valuable addition to any executive's reading list, but it's a masterpiece. It deserves a place alongside the works of Michael Porter, Kaplan & Norton, and Drucker.
(From quoting Mike Tarrani, USA)
Target readers:
Executives, Managers, Entrepreneurs, Professionals, Consultants, Acamedics, and MBAs.
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Donald Mitchell is CEO and chairman of Mitchell and Company, a financial and strategy consulting firm that was founded in 1977. He has worked on assignments with the most senior officers at hundreds of major companies including Abitibi-Consolidated, Aetna, American International Group, AMP, Armstrong World Industries, Baxter International, Beckman Coulter, Becton Dickinson, Bell & Howell, Black & Decker, Boise Cascade, Campbell Soup, CIGNA, Citigroup, Colgate-Palmolive, Deere, Dow Chemical, Eastman Chemical, Emerson Electric, Ford, Georgia- Pacific, W.W. Grainger, Hershey Foods, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, ITT, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Lockheed Martin, Lubrizol, Mallinckrodt, McCormick, McGraw-Hill, Molex, Motorola, Nabisco Brands, Northrop Grumman, Olin, PepsiCo, Pitney Bowes, Procter & Gamble, Ralston Purina, Raytheon, Schering-Plough, Charles Schwab, Siemens, Southwest Airlines, Time Warner, Union Carbide, US WEST, Warner-Lambert, and Xerox. He is a professional speaker at major meetings such as those conducted by Business Week’s annual conference for Chief Financial Officers and the Young President’s Organization. He has undertaken pioneering research in the areas of CEO best practices, developing improved business models, and stock price enhancement. His research on the latest CEO best practices have been featured annually in Chief Executive Magazine, and are widely studied by CEOs of many major companies. He has also written on these subjects several times for Directors & Boards, the leading publication on governance for directors of public companies. He has written more than two dozen major articles on these subjects. He has been quoted in Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal more than 100 times. More than 150 journalists contact him for stories annually from publications all over the world. He is a graduate of Harvard College with an A.B. in history, and has a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School. While attending Harvard Law School , he also took the second year marketing curriculum at Harvard Business School. He is a member of the bar in Massachusetts. He is a former director of the Harvard Alumni Association and a former Treasurer of the Harvard Law School Association. As a hobby, he writes on-line book reviews and was the second most popular customer reviewer on Amazon.com Carol Coles is COO and president of Mitchell and Company, and co-founded the firm. She has an extensive practice in strategy development and stock-price improvement. Ms. Coles has led assignments with over 100 major companies, including some of the firms listed above. She has been quoted in major publications more than 50 times. She also does professional speaking to major groups, including the ones listed above. This will be the third book that she has coauthored with Donald Mitchell. She is a graduate of New York University, and has a masters degree from Columbia University.
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From the Publisher:
Authors Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles conducted a ten-year study of companies that had grown the fastest over a three-year period. Their research reveals that while unsuccessful companies doggedly apply outdated business models, the successful ones improve their models every two to four years. The Ultimate Competitive Advantage provides a straightforward, systematic method any company can use to review and improve its business model and each of its key components: pricing, costs of doing business, and benefits added. Dozens of concrete examples from companies of all sizes and types are provided.
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Dennis Littrell (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
The central message of this book is that you have to continually reinvent the way you do business in order to stay ahead of the competition. Mitchell and Coles call this "continuing business model innovation." It's very much like the experience of the Red Queen in Alice and Wonderland: you have to keep moving just to stay in the same place, and if you want to get ahead, you better start running.
Well, what's new about this? What's new is that everything in our world is now changing so fast that it is no longer enough to simply find a need and fill it, or to discover how to do something better than those who are currently doing it, and for less. You got to do that again and again, year in and year out, and you have to constantly be looking for ways to expand your services and improve your products. In short, it has to be the continuing policy and practice of your company to work toward developing a more profitable business model. This is especially true for successful companies since you WILL be imitated.
Okay, this sounds right, but just how do I go about reinventing my business model? Well, that's what Mitchell and Coles wanted to know, and so beginning in 1992 they went out and studied 100 successful companies and especially their CEOs, including such stalwarts as Clear Channel Communi- cations, EMC, Dell Computers, Paychex, Goldcorp, etc. They asked questions and they listened. They realized that many of the business models that once worked would not work today, and that what worked today would fall behind tomorrow. They learned that gaining a competitive advantage through management effectiveness became more important than ever in the go-go nineties. But the biggest lesson they learned is that "business model obsolescence" is the greatest threat to all businesses now. Of course, they reverse this negative perception and point out that avoiding business model obsolescence is the greatest opportunity now available to your business. This way of thinking is sure to provide excitement in many stagnating businesses today, and is sure to set a fire under somebody's derriere. It might as well be yours, is the message the authors want to get across.
They support this message with a slew of examples from the companies they studied, showing how innovations in pricing, in expanding customer benefits, in creating reductions in costs, in coming up with new ways to increase market share, in adding customer value for the same or a lower price, etc. have worked for others and how they might work for you. They note that "business model innovation usually requires more mental agility than resources..." (p. 218) That's good news to hear since resources are often limited. They give case histories and recount in detail how some of the inventive CEOs took their companies from share prices in the pennies to share prices in the hundreds of dollars (!). Of course some people got lucky and expanded with the bubble, but others didn't, and those that are still successful today have innovated and are continuing to innovate. Mitchell and Coles document this truth.
The densely-packed material in the book is handsomely presented, exceptionally well-edited, and the book's design is first class. There are sidebars highlighting key information and ideas, and subtitles that allow the reader to focus quickly on areas of especial interest. Chapters typically begin with a well-chosen key-note quotation from authorities as diverse as the Bible, Sun-Tzu and Irving Berlin. The style is clear and business-like. The authors are seasoned business strategy consultants who are working on a series of books to help improve your business. This the third in the series, and the one that the authors recommend you read first. There are "Key Questions" at the end of chapters to keep you focused and to highlight and further explain ideas. The authors emphasize looking back objectively at both your company's successes and failures with the time-honored realization that we can often learn more from our failures than from our successes; and indeed the difference between a successful innovation and an unsuccessful one can be as narrow as the razor's edge.
One of the things that most impressed me about this book is the way the authors emphasize the positive aspects of being successful in business, sharing benefits, increasing not just shareholder value, but value to the customer and to those who work for and with you. This kind of enlightened self-interest approach to business is not only a pleasant departure from the Machiavellian model that one so often sees presented, but is a surer way to success, not only to success in business, but to success in life. I know from my experience with Don Mitchell that he is a wise and considerate person who understands the business world and what it takes to get ahead. This book will surely set you in the right direction, and most likely will stimulate you to do even better than you are doing, and especially help you anticipate and indeed create tomorrow's business climate.
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Alessandro Bruno (MSL quote), Canada
<2007-01-11 00:00>
It's been quite some time that i've wanted to write a review of this fine book. I should state from the outset that I'm not a business person. My motivations and opinions on this book derive form a more literary interest and, more significantly, from having read other business books only to find them utterly disappointing. So why do I find this one different? For one thing, it's well written and avoids much of the common jargon that is so fashionable in more popular quick tips and quick fix books that have sold millions of copies and been translated in countless languages form Spanish to eastern Mongolian Dialect. Speking of Mongolia, this book will not inspire you with the leadership skills of Genghis Khan, not will it offer metaphors of mice, fish and other fauna. No, Donald Mitchell and carol Coles deal exclusively in common sense examples of how the competitive structure of your organization - and by extension your own personal attitude - may benefit from clearly explained principles and case studies. I have actually sought advice form this book in organizing the contents of a conference on an entirely different, and find its general usefulness such to wrrant me keeping my copy of the book at my desk in my office for reference. i believe this is the first time that I can actually use rather than berate the advice contained in a business book. |
Jusuf Hariman (MSL quote), Australia
<2007-01-11 00:00>
Every decade or so businesses have to master an essential new task in order to prosper. Today, business model innovation is that task. The Ultimate Competitive Advantage is the template you need to master this critical challenge. In the language of competitive advantage, continual business model innovation is the source of sustainable competitive advantage. The authors sought to find the simplest, most effective management methods that the most successful companies have used since 1992 to continually outperform competitors. They hope to find these methods by tracking and studying top performing companies while they thought of and made the changes that create these competitive achievements. That kind of real-time measurement and study of creating competitive advantages across many different studies has never been done before. The message of The Ultimate Competitive Advantage is to develop and implement a superior management process that continually improves an organisation's business model - as well as fairly and appropriately rewarding all stakeholders. Recent experience clearly shows that continual business nmodel innovation is the most powerful competitive advantage you can have now. This book is the first strategy and management process guidebook on the successful experiences of continual, industry-leading business model innovators. Mitchell and Coles have created a book which titillates and stimulates the mind into action.
The authors provide valuable insights and real world examples of the most important issues separating success from failures in business today. The Ultimate Competitive Advantage is for anyone looking for a new and powerful paradigm for creating success out of the chaos in today's dynamic business climate. The Ultimate Competitive Advantage shows you how to recharging your crerativity, innovation and profit. It challenges existing paradigms and continually reinvesting the competitive landscape to your advantage. For example, rather than do more with less, learn how to do more of what counts. This book sees continual business model innovationb as the source of sustainable competitive advantage. In this, it goes beyond Michael Porter and Jay Barney. This book is superior to Competitive Advantage and Gaining and Sustaining Competitive ADvantage. |
Jim Schiavone (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-11 00:00>
With penetrating sapience, Mitchell and Coles take readers on an informative journey exploring the dynamics of successful business. Indeed successful business is a dynamic process of continuous evaluation of consumer needs and preferences, as well as cognition of the ever present competition. The key to this unique business book is in the message it carries of the importance of attending to "business model innovation." What worked ten years ago may no longer be viable in light of what competitive companies may be initiating and undertaking as they move forward to gain ever increasing shares of the marketplace. In short, company leaders must be amenable to ongoing learning and introduction of successful innovation. The Ultimate Competitive Advantage, is a gem in providing the seeds necessary for effective model innovation for both small and large businesses. The authors, with breviloquent aplomb, present cases of successful business innovation in diverse companies. This work is a must read for the enterprising entrepreneur. |
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