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Summary: should be required for all business majors
Review: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage is a well written book by Donald M itchell and Carol Coles about how to make organizations and corporations run well. The book is filled with plenty of good examples to illustrate the concepts and ideas the book is trying to potray. At the end of each chapter, there are questions that make you brainstorm about your business. The questions help with trying to apply the concepts of the book to your life. The book is split up into four areas. The first part of the book consists of the most productive areas for business model innovation. The second part is relates to providing sustained benefits for all stakeholders. Part three deals with expanding model innovation. The last part deals with pursing higher potential business model improvements. The first part deals with such important topics such as increasing value without raising prices and costs, adjusting prices to increase sales profitability and to eliminate costs that reduce customer and end user benefits. It deals with issues such as trying to figure out what customers already what and trying to address those desires as opposed to creating new desires as well as building on past knowledge and memory of business operations to make your company run smoothly, adjusting prices to influence usage and expanding consumption, and expanding customer benefits. The second part of the book deals with providing sustained benefits to all stakeholders. It deals with issues such as building a buffer for lean times, and sharing benefits fairly with all who create them. Topics discussed in this area of the book are creating an ideal business model to guide model innovations, expanding resources faster then they are being used, fairly shairng benefits with all stakeholders, communication with stakeholders such as disucussing potential business modles so they can evaluate them and help the corporation improve them, as well as making it a point to find out about psychological and tangible benefits from stakeholders. Part thee of the Ultimate Competetive Advantage deal with expanding business model innovation such as creating business model innovatins ahead of the competition and always trying to enhance the business model. This part focuses on certain things to be avoided like the technology trap (example polaroid, former head of the photography industry at one point but filed for bankruptc in 2001). It also deals with how businesses shoudl always try to innovate even if they are at the top of their game because things can always be improved. The last part of the book deals with pursuing higher porential business model improvements such as focusing on areas where there are the greatest potentials of growth and profitabality and expanding the level of benefits business provide. It dealsl with how to bring advantages to your businses such Dell which has always made computers based on the speficiations of each customer which expands consumer's utility of dell computers while reducing uncessary costs because not everyone wants the same compents on a computer like zip drive while other may want it. Overall, this should be required for all college business majors and anyone wanted to start their own business or just climb the corporate ladder. It provides how to run corporate plans well.
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Summary: Excellent Book for The CEO and Major Company Players
Review: As an entrepreneur with a small business, I found this book a bit hard to read and apply to my needs. But having said that, I could see where the CEO of a major corporation or other officers of major enterprises would be well advised to read it. The book gives an abundance of ways a business can get and keep the competitive advantage. And I must add that the entrepreneur and small business person can use some of these ideas as well. For example, one suggestion is to have lots of cash and very little debt. We all can apply that. Unlike a lot of books on the market today, this book is more academic. It lacks the easy reading of a book by the likes of Seth Godin, for example. But unlike a Godin book, this one has lots of meat and will call for a second read and most people will want to keep it as a reference as well. It is not a light weight book. I like the idea of increasing customer value and reducing the cost of service described in the book. These are thoughtful and workable ideas that will improve any business. And the main thing we all want in our businesses is to gain competitive advantage. Reading this book is one very good way to start the ball rolling in that direction. Susanna K. Hutcheson
Owner and Executive Copy Director
Powerwriting.com LLC
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Summary: Should Become a Top Business Book of the 2000-2010 Decade
Review: .
Do you feel inspired by your company's current business model? If, like most people, your answer is "no," then this book is for you. In the face of ongoing, rapidly-evolving marketplace changes, companies must continually innovate to stay competitive. But every 5 or 10 years, companies need to do more. They need to fundamentally change how they do business. Fortunately, every 5 or 10 years, a timely business book comes along to show them how. This is such a book. Indeed, "The Ultimate Competitive Advantage" should become one of the top business books of the 2000-2010 decade. The "big idea" of this book is that business models become at least partially obsolete and that business model innovation presents a unique competitive opportunity. The book thus moves us beyond corporate tinkering (re-engineering, continuous improvement, etc.) to focus on strategic change in the basic business model. The authors have worked with scores of perennially successful CEOs to discover how they practice business model innovation. These path-finding CEOs found they were better off working to improve their company's business model than on the efficiency of day-to-day operations. In fact, most of them so re-invented their business models that they clearly outpaced their competitors. The experiences and lessons of how these CEOs succeed are organized into 4 parts: • Part 1: The 3 most-used/most-successful ways to reinvent business models. • Part 2: How to build a stronger base for future business model inventions. • Part 3: How to develop resources to boost business model innovation. • Part 4: How to broaden/grow markets by re-inventing the business model. Each chapter ends with out-of-the-box questions that provoke you to translate the book's lessons into the context of your own business situation. For example, by asking "What will our next business model look like?" you are forced to revision and rethink your business model. Failure to explore such questions may lead you to ignore a competitive vulnerability or to miss a market opportunity - that could break or make your business in the next few years. As a strategic business futurist, I agree with the authors that the most adept business model innovators are those who seek out the most powerful trends (through scenario-based thinking) and then facilitate their development. The book spells out four dimensions of an effective, future-oriented business model innovation process. Following this process, you'll learn how to install your company's next business model - one that is visionary and inspiring to you, your associates, your customers, and your stakeholders. I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Schumpeter meets Hegel
Review: The whirlwind of creative destruction is harnessed to the concept of continuous revolution in this handbook of how to think strategically in an arena that is both instantaneous and worldwide.
Looking to business models instead of technology as the key strategic advantage for the near future, Mitchell and Coles distilled a decade-long research project, involving interviews and with CEOs of consistently successful companies that had ridden the crest of uncertainty by reinventing how they operated, in creating this book. What they found is that, of those businesses they selected to study, the ones who maintained their edge had changed their business model, many more than once. While their research begins in 1989, some of the companies in question had pioneered the concept, decades earlier. (Nucor Steel had been, "The Nuclear Corporation of America," a conglomerate making, among other things, radiac meters, before F. Kenneth Iverson reformulated their business model to that of a high-tech minimill.)
The emphasis on strategy, in seeing new opportunities in seemingly random or unconnected events, and the decidedly long view of history implicit in the underlying philosophy is what recommends the work above all else. (The authors also clearly have a broad background in classical economics, and quoteAdam Smith, Alfred Marshall and others to illustrate key points.) Much of the strategic planning/scenerio building advice reminds this writer of concepts that he first ecountered in military life, and the anology of busines to war is not a new one. (Think of Sun Tzu, lately a business guru, after millenia as a fount of military doctrine.)
Like generals preparing to fight the last war, many business leaders stick with a winning formula even as it reaches the point of diminishing returns, and as unacknowledged competitors become mortal dangers to their security. One example used by the authors is of Red Hat Linux, which depends at least partially on product innovations offered by the open-source community. While Microsoft may be market-dominant and debt-free, their business model, which, the authors note, defeated Netscape in the browser wars by offering Internet Explorer as a no-cost, bundled product with Windows, it may not be able to keep them as cost leader in the operating system market against competition relying on what Eric Raymond described as the gift culture of the open-source community ("The Cathedral and the Bazaar"). Whether Microsoft will (assuming that Red Had and company succeed in making Linux a critical threat to Windows) abandon what has been enormously successful for them (their business model) for the untried is the choice faced by everyone on top when challenged by asymmetric competition. The failure to see, plan for, and meet such challenges is more often the fate of yesterday's leaders than is the successful business model innovation that Mitchell and Coles describe. (See also, "The Innovator's Dilemma" for case studies of this problem.)
Involving as many minds as possible in worst-case-scenerio planning is another bit of wisdom, validated by the testimony of CEOs whom the authors found to be constantly ahead of the competition. This leveraging of existing resources (they're already on the payroll, if they are employees) is a low- to no-cost way to offset competitor advantages in fixed capital resources that the reader may not be able to match.
While the book is generally shorn of technical minutia, making for quick readability, the discussion on pricing strategies is fairly detailed, and provides insight into how to use pricing to test business model concepts before fully committing to them. As with the other chapters, the section on pricing is well-illustrated with case studies in what worked - and what did not.
The book is well worth an evening's read, especially before events make agonizing reappraisals of how one operates a necessity.
-Lloyd A. Conway
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Summary: best #strategy# books for any business.
Review: BUSINESS MODEL INNNOVATION, is really the most important thing in business to succeed. And the book will provides you with enough samples, the how-to, and what-to-focus, to make this works. I have started more than 20 businesses (mostly small businesses that works) during my entire 16 years business life, and i know exactly that the most profiting way in doing a business is having a real solid business model innovation that works. I prefer to think this as a #strategy# course that can be more useful as any strategy course in the top business school's program, and it is written in a simple way, with enough solid samples. The short 5 pages story of A CHILDREN'S LEMONADE STAND will be worth more that the price of the book. It teach you in the simplest way about Business Model Innovation. Reading past half of the book, i am eager to put some of the thinking into my own businesses. If you are a devision head, a small business owners (like me), or a CEO of major business, get back to basic, to the real thinking of your basic strategy. We all know that hard-work is a myth, it can not bring success, smart-work will bring better success at half the efforts. Now this book will teach you how to do exactly that.
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Summary: Advice That Works for Big and Small Businesses
Review: Reviewed by Theresa Welsh, author and reviewer, co-author of The Brave New Service Strategy The Ultimate Competitive Advantage gives business advice that seems simple and obvious, but actually doing what the authors suggest takes vision and effort. Mitchell and Coles tell us if we want to succeed in business, we must constantly improve our business model -- another way of saying "if you keep on doing the same old thing, you'll soon be out of business." What I liked about their approach is that it stresses bringing benefit to all stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders, and communities. Instead of just finding ways to lower costs, they show how some companies find new ways to lower costs while providing a better service or product to their customers, and even looking beyond their immediate customer to their customer's customer. These companies ask: How can everyone gain? Companies that look only at bottom-line savings when making a change, emphasizing short-term benefit for only one stakeholder, can find themselves in trouble. Enron is a good example of a company that was so focused on its stock price that it betrayed the interests of employees and suppliers, doing great harm to its employees, suppliers, the community and finally destroying the company itself. The authors say having good values that emphsize benefit for all is important in business success. What a refreshing idea! Of course saying the company should move to new business models and finding the right new business model are two different things. Sometimes companies find their entire business is based on a technology they pioneered, but which is headed for obsolescence. One such example is Polaroid. The company had a virtual monopoly on instant pictures with its Polaroid cameras. But faster photo processing and finally digital cameras made its product less attractive. In a company so rooted in one kind of product, making the leap from one technology to another that is totally different (chemical vs. digital photography, for example) would certainly be a very difficult thing to do. Or to use an old worn-out example, what should a company making buggy whips in 1900 have done? Horses and cars are also very different, and these kinds of fundamental changes in society often kill formerly-thriving businesses. Yet Mitchell and Coles say companies must anticipate the next new thing and make the jump, even if it means abandoning their old turf. One company that did that was Perkin Elmer, which switched from making routine scientific instruments to finding better, faster ways to sequence DNA. They shifted their focus from doing something they knew very well to doing something they had to learn, where innovation was necessary to gain the market. Businesses seeking to improve their business model should find ways of providing new services to customers or delivering something extra for no more cost to the company or the customer. Larger companies need to test new business models but small companies are more agile; they may come up with innovations that can be implemented quickly. Throughout the book, the authors use the example of a childrens' lemonade stand. They suggest ways the children can offer a new service (chairs so customers don't have to stand), alter their product (add iced tea or other beverage), or provide more for less (offer a family price, or weekly rate). I particularly enjoyed their examples of very small businesses, like Ray Hughes, the golf caddy, and Michael Cagliandro, the barber. These people who worked at modest professions found ways to please customers while adding services and building successful and satisfying businesses. The authors also profile Frank Lloyd Wright, whose bold architectural ideas took him from a one-man shop designing homes for ordinary people to running a firm that created important public buildings like the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. But it was his vision of making better living and working spaces for everyone that led him to constantly innovate new ways to serve the public. Like most good business advice, the ideas in this book require study and thought to see how they might apply to a specific business. Doing what the authors suggest is not simple, but the concept of constantly working on your business model to find the next level of benefit for all stakeholders is very useful and can potentially be applied to every type of business from lemonade stands to multi-national corporations...
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Summary: Provocative Approaches to Business Model Improvement
Review: Too many business managers focus on a successful company's minimum requirements. Have customers; collect receivables; remit payables; weather disasters; out-maneuver competitors and not unimportantly; report profits. Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles, two Massachusetts-based business consultants, in their third book, challenge managers to recognize that business model obsolescence is the major unperceived opportunity for and at the same time threat to their enterprises. By simply adding these five foundational principles to the list, they can become "all they can be": 1. Serve more people with what is perceived as improved performance, more rapidly and in more ways with fewer resources.
2. Make each thought and activity apply to people and their purposes that are not now being served.
3. Involve more people when considering each thought and activity.
4. Begin each morning with the thought you are starting a new company.
5. Strengthen your stakeholders' commitment to these principles. There can be little doubt that if more managers attached each day armed with these principles, their companies, customers and everyone they contacted would experience improved lives.
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Summary: Get this book before your competitors do!
Review: In today's world of business, change is the only constant. Many businesses seem to rely on the tried and true methods of yester-year hoping that the things which worked yesterday will work tomorrow. Those who think this way are in for a rude awakening. A changing marketplace demands business innovation that puts value on serving the customer better than the competition, and delivers shareholder return. The authors of this work contend that the "ultimate competitive advantage" is an ever-evolving business model. By "business model" the authors mean the "who, what, where, when, and how" of how a company goes about satisfying consumer needs. Those who do this better than their competitors will ultimately win, while those who merely fix what was broken yesterday so that it runs today will find themselves out of business. The book delves into what exactly is a business model and how it relates to the customer and the competition. One important fact stood out in the book: to merely change a part of your business practice without adapting to a changing market place and increasing customer satisfaction, will lead to disaster. In other words, it isn't so much a fixing of a problem area as it is constantly observing the market and making those little adjustments to your business model--the way you do things, the overall picture--so that you reduce costs, increase customer service, and provide increasing value to both customer and shareholder. The book abounds with profiles of scores of companies and what they did to adapt their business model to changing times. The book is also replete with many recommendations as to how a bisiness--large or small-- can implement these same strategies to improve their profit picture. In the foreward, it is recommended that if you read only one business book in the next five years, make it this one. And I believe that the writer is right on track. The book has hit the nail on the head in recognizing that the business which makes continual surveys and adjustments to their business model are the ones who are going to survive in this age of the ever-changing marketplace.
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Summary: Interesting reading and a reference book of good ideas
Review: The problem with business books is that the model for success in retail isn't quite the same for service products, or for technology products. So some books are too general for getting good ideas, or they are very specific and then get outdated quickly. "The Ultimate Competitive Advantage" has a wealth of anecdotes and experience that can be mined for value for your organization. I work in a technology field and I found some of the ideas applicable and quite useful. This is one of those books that you should keep on the shelf and review from time to time. The subject matter is diverse; from successful customer programs to profit-and-loss to diversity. Some of the ideas might become useful as your business direction changes. I think this is a valuable reference and a good book for stimulating ideas of your own.
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Summary: Acheive a more profitable business model . . .
Review: Of all the books I've read on change management this is the most precise in its statement about how corporations need to manage the continuous innovation of their business model in order to survive and thrive in our global, competitive marketplace. Replete with real world examples of successful business model innovation, traps, and pitfalls, this clearly written book provides definitions, case studies, and "rules to live by." Continually provide more benefits for your customers; ". . . business model obsolescence is the major unperceived opportunity for and threat to all businesses now" is the self-proclaimed "Big Idea" of this book. Indeed it is. From that theme, Mitchell and Coles go on to build an air-tight case for continuous business model improvement. And the business model is simply defined as the: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and How Much for your product or service. But the simplicity of this concept of a business model should not mislead the reader. There is a significant amount of introspection and work that a leadership team must go through to really understand the answers to these questions in order to map where they are today and what they might do to positively change the model. Mitchell and Coles keep our interest through real live case studies as well as tracking the growth of a child's Lemonade Stand business. The book is divided into four major parts: 1 The Most Productive Areas for Business Model Innovation; 2. Provide Sustained Benefits for All Stakeholders; 3. Expand Business Model Innovation; and 4. Pursue Higher-Potential Business Model Improvement. Each of these sections use real life case studies and hypothetical Lemonade Stands to illustrate the business change management principles. Those examples also provide hope and encouragement to leadership teams in all kinds of businesses that they are not alone in keeping change management from becoming an oxymoron! After reading this book, you will want to keep it handy for reference, ideas for new paths to explore, and to loan to others who seem simply not to "get it!" What I appreciated most was the honest focus on providing what customers and end users really want in a product or service. Starting there, we can drive our companies to greater achievements by continuous business model innovation. Rarely do I rate a book a five on a scale of five, but Mitchell and Coles get that rating for The Ultimate Competitive Advantage! Dave Kinnear, CEO, dbkAssociates, Inc.
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