Competitive Strategy

I first met Robert Shiller in person as we were seated next to each other at a breakfast panel discussion. I found myself inadvertently eating all the fruits on his plate and drinking his coffee and water, leaving him with the muffins and other unfashionable food (and nothing to drink). He did not complain (he may have not noticed). I did not know Shiller when I featured him in the first edition and was surprised by his accessibility, his humility, and his charm (by some heuristic one does not expect people who have vision to be also personable).”

Excerpt From: Nassim Nicholas Taleb. “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.”

Every firm competing in an industry has a competitive strategy, whether explicit or implicit. There are significant benefits to gain through an explicit process of formulating strategy, to ensure that at least the policies of functional departments are coordinated and directed at some common set of goals.

The Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

WHAT IS STRATEGY? For one thing, it is probably the business world’s most used and abused word. We have strategies for everything: from advertising to logistics to human resources to custodian engineering. This is a shame, for the concept of strategy is both profound and useful. Bruce Henderson captured it classically: “All competitors who persist over time must maintain a unique advantage by differentiation over all others. Managing that differentiation is the essence of long-term business strategy.

The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy: Classic Concepts and New Perspectives

Value is created through internal business processes. The financial and customer perspectives in strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards describe the outcomes, that is, what the organization hopes to achieve: increases in shareholder value through revenue growth and productivity improvements; increases in the company’s share of customers’ spending through customer acquisition, satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and growth.

Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes