What's Your Competitive Advantage?

7 Strategies for Running a More Profitable Business in a Complex World

Cliff Bowman, Paul Raspin

Publisher: Pearson, 2019, 322 pages

ISBN: 978-1-292-25939-0

Keywords: Strategy

Last modified: Dec. 17, 2022, 4:49 a.m.

Discover seven value-creating strategies for your business, each with a different way to improve your business performance.

Choose from the seven competitive strategies to road-map your direction and deliver customer value efficiently.

  1. Specialisation — focus on your product and compete through superior product performance.
  2. Adaptive — increase the ability to respond to changing circumstances and customer needs.
  3. Low cost — deliver equivalent product quality to competitors with a cost reduction.
  4. Innovation — compete through product innovations.
  5. Excellence — continuous incremental improvement of product or service quality.
  6. No-frills — server price-sensitive customers with an alternative product or service.
  7. Targeting — focus on a specific market segment.

With this book, you will be able to:

  • Understand complexity and its implications for leading a business.
  • Set a direction for your business that aligns with the realities of a complex world.
  • Lead strategic change processes with confidence and with a clarity of purpose.
  • Develop deep insights into the processes of value creation and value capture.
  • Part 1: Value-creating strategies
    1. Creating value
    2. Seven competitive strategies
      • Application 1: PUV analysis
    3. The firm as a value system
  • Part 2: The change process
    1. Strategy-guided change
      • Application 2: Exploring contrasting strategies
    2. Omega Business School
      • Application 3: Brainstorming all seven strategies
  • Part 3: Case studies
    1. Excellence
      • Application 4: Envisioning the future culture of the business
    2. Low cost
    3. Innovation
    4. Adaptive
    5. No frills
    6. Targeting and specialisation
  • Part 4: From strategy into action
    1. Strategy initiatives and feedback
      • Application 5: Mapping the value system
      • Application 6: Exploring strategy initiatives
    2. Strategic assets and capabilities
      • Application 7: The strategic asset audit
      • Application 8: Cause mapping
      • Application 9: Combining the asset audit and cause mapping
  • Part 5: Corporate strategies
    1. Synergy strategies and scope choices
      • Application 10: Exploring two synergy strategies