Rating: 
Summary: Finally Someone Gets It Right
Review: Don Mitchell and Carol Coles have written a highly stimulating and thought provoking book for any "business manager" wrestling with the challenges of helping their companies survive, grow and thrive for the long term.It presents a framework for breaking the "thinking log-jam" in determining "what is possible" and "how high to reach" without betting the ranch. The most significant takeaway from the book is that there isn't one solution for all businesses...you have to iteratively create your own unique competitive advantage from within. What they do provide is a methodology to think, to analyze and to evaluate developing that competitive advantage for your business or organization. It is well written, includes interesting examples and anecdotes and weaves the reader through the necessary analytics without the drudery of a didactic and academic treatise style. I am reminded of the movie Cool Hand Luke when the warden says to Paul Neuman after his mother dies, "Luke, your mind just ain't right" and gets sent to solitary confinement. If an organizations' mind "ain't right" it is highly unlikely to develop that unique competitive advantage. This book is a great tool for getting the organizations' thought process in the right place to start the process.
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Summary: Typical American Business Book
Review: Consultants Mitchell and Coles have written an easily approachable business book. The book argues that every business manager should ask how to improve the existing business model. Answer? Expand your business and focus it to the areas where you can gain competitive advantage. But isn't the argument too vague and self-evident? Of course you can make more money if you have a better business model than your competitors do. Perhaps more interesting than the argument itself is therefore the tips and expreriences Mitchell and Coles share with their readers. Based on extensive interviews with hunders of companies they tell us success stories from diverse fields of businesses ranging from computer industry to airlines and gold mines. They pose practical questions and call for an open mind. Where can you cut cost without compromising value? How could you share benefits with all who contribute? And so on... All in all, don't take the book's title literally: I didn't find any ultimate solution or secrets in this book. Don't expect anything you wouldn't have read from somewhere else. Don't expect any detailed case analyses either. But do expect good narrative, upbeat tempo and belief in the human values. Expect an American business book par excellence. So get inspired and go create!
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Summary: Entertaining Anecdotes on Business Innovation
Review: Aimed at a broad cross-section of new entrepreneurs, investors, change agents, and business leaders, Mitchell/Coles' "The Ultimate Competitive Advantage" offers a glimpse at tactics, tools, and success exemplars leading to sustainable competitive advantage and innovation. Based upon interviews of some 100 companies CEOs demonstrating business model innovation success over the past decade, entertaining lightly referenced chapters span:
> Part1- Most productive areas for business model innovation- increase value without raising prices and costs; adjust prices to increase sales profitability; and eliminate costs that reduce customer and end-user benefits.
> Part 2- Provide sustained benefits for all stakeholders- further improve your business model and build a buffer for leaner times; and share benefits fairly with all who create them.
> Part 3- Expand business model innovation- start business model innovation ahead of competitors and stay focused; and enhance your organizations ongoing business model innovation capability.
> Part 4- Pursue higher-potential business model improvement- focus on areas of highest potential growth and profitability; and expand the profits you provide and share. The core of the book focuses on business model creativity typical of "world champion" companies (not necessarily featuring in the Fortune 500), with linkages to leadership, marketing, stakeholders, cost models, corporate governance and ethics, organizational behavior, and operations management. As such, spanning such a large domain, there is a tendency to offer outline information only and not refer to bodies of knowledge, expertise or tools (some over 30 years old)- all essential for the practitioner to be aware of. Specifically missing:
> when talking about customer needs: Order Qualifying/Winning criterion of Slack (London Business School), Competitor-Performance matrices, Quality Functional Deployment (and all the other TQM tools), product design specification (engineering institutions), marketing perceptual mapping, personas (Alan Cooper, father of Visual Basic also Constantine- PeopleWare) ;
> scenarios omitted any mention of formal scenario planning (Royal Dutch Shell,1970s);
> operations excellence and product-service innovation omitted any world class benchmarking or toolkit (including BPR detail), and seems unaware of role of simulation including discrete event simulation to model supply chain improvements (also dismissing continuous improvement out of hand, perhaps unaware of front-line results); and
> lack of broad knowledge/history context (interdisciplinary contributions from engineering, computer science to balance (non IT) business-marketing perspective- suggesting mass customization and human centric business much more recent than the case (human centric ergonomics innovated majorly in 1950s and 1960s). Entertainingly written, readers may pick up a few ideas/checklists through the rich anecdotal tapestry offsetting the lack of charts, frameworks, detail and pointers to other techniques useful for the practitioner. Ultimately there are better books out there, unsurprisingly some feature as professional (engineer, manager) and university graduate texts (keywords: operations management, product-market engineering, technology innovation, and Senge's learning Organization). [Note- Review based upon a complimentary copy sent by author.]
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Summary: Finally, a Book for All Businesses
Review: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage is a book about business that all businesses can use to improve long term results without having to translate theories and recommendations designed for very large companies before using them in smaller companies. Very few business writers are able to deliver solid advice, rooted in real world experiences, that can be applied directly to both large and small companies. I am always looking for good books to share with the members of CEO Roundtable, the CEOs of smaller companies, and find that most are targeted to either large companies or very small companies. Mitchell and Coles have designed their book for all size companies. Every chapter starts with examples from smaller companies and demonstrates how the ideas and recommendations have been developed and implemented in small companies as well as large companies. The best examples, of coarse, are of how small companies became large companies by continually changing their business models. This is a very helpful book and I have given it to every member of CEO Roundtable.
Rating:
Summary: A breath of fresh air
Review: Fantastic, provocative, inspired, this is one of the best business books I have read this year. "The Ultimate Competitive Advantage" points out that one of the problems with corporate planning is that companies build their business model as if it is static. What worked before will work now. What works now will always work. The problem is that by the time they figure out that something has changed it is often too late or many opportunities are lost. Business models need to be dynamic. Throughout the book the authors give examples of ways companies have kept their business model flexible and were able to take advantage of opportunities to stay ahead of their competitors. If you want to get a handle on innovation and creating a dynamic business model that is sustainable over time, then this is the book you are looking for. "The Ultimate Competitive Advantage" is a very highly recommended book for anyone seeking that missing piece in their business education that will allow their business to soar above the crowd.
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Summary: How To Run A Successful Business
Review: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage gives an excellent account on how business succede. The fundamental concept of this book is that companies must continue to alter their business model to the changes that happen in their respective industries. This books is fully loaded with successful business models from many companies like Paychex, Dell, Xlinx, Iron Mountain, and Habitat For Humanity. The details behind these success stories are fascinating. The book is presented in a very easy to read fashion. The authors use some varying font styles and blurbs that are eye catching but not overwhelming. The approach is extremely organized most notably the example of Sybron Dental Specialties successful business model. The example of providing good customer service is amplified superbly by the story behind barber Michael Cogliandro. Its so important to value one's customers over immediate dollars in many instances as the future benefits can often increase ten fold. Whether you are considering starting your own business or if you need a solid blue print on things to look for in a successful company, this book is for you. Its an extremely informative and easy to read book that you will refer to on many occasions.
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Summary: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO GROWTH AND MANAGEMENT
Review: This book's main argument is that business model innovation is the best approach to establishing competitive advantage. As such, they argue that model innovation is more productive, from the perspective of upper management, than focusing on improve the operational efficiency of the existing model. The most striking feature of this book is the sheer number of examples used. I don't think one could find a business strategy book with more examples; given the often fuzzy nature of strategy books, this is a welcomed change. I see the book as structured into two parts: first, the authors present what business model innovation is and present a million examples; second, the authors make the case for how an organization can be designed to be flexible enough to adapt to this type of innovation, and ultimately to develop the innovation itself. I have finished the book a strong believer in the benefits of business model innovation. I especially enjoyed the summaries at the end that help the reader apply the concepts to their own cases. As a practitioner, I look forward to trying to apply the ideas in the book in practice.
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Summary: Marketing 101
Review: According to the authors the obsolescence of a company's business model is that company's greatest threat. And few companies are addressing the issue in any systematic manner. The concept of a business model includes "the who, what, when, where, why, and how much a company uses to provide its goods and services and receive value for its efforts." The authors are basically suggesting that if businesses are not improving their performance relative to their competitors, that is changing their business model, in terms of "sales, profits, and cash flow," they are probably facing a decline in their prospects. It is claimed that the right business model innovation will be beneficial to stakeholders across the board: "customers, end users, employees, partners, suppliers, distributors, lenders, shareholders, and the broader community." But the focus of the book is on obtaining, enlarging, and protecting competitive advantages, that is, to expanding both market boundaries and share, and, of course, on profitability. The authors demonstrate the workings of several approaches to achieving these ends by including any number of brief glimpses of various companies. Among those approaches are "adding value for customers and end users" without raising prices; devising astute pricing schemes; and eliminating costs that impact customers by adopting such measures as outsourcing, reallocating resources, changing practices, and using more appropriate materials. A somewhat suspect example is of a major communications company who, through FCC abdication of its responsibilities, has been permitted to achieve a monopoly of radio and television stations in several metropolitan areas of the country and then offers customers value-added advertising deals that they could little afford to not take (not the authors' words). That is certainly one form of "locking out" competitors regardless of any ethical issues. The idea that all stakeholders within or connected to a business deserve fair, if not equal, treatment has gained currency in the business press in recent years. But that notion is often limited to one appealing to some form of material self-interest, which leaves lying below the surface any examination of any fundamental or potential conflicts among the various stakeholders. In a somewhat revealing example, one CEO regards his customers and consumers as "citizens" of his company with quasi-rights to input. But employees are like "paid volunteers" because of their alleged devotion to the company's direction. It is an idea that distorts what employment could be. Employees, in actuality, are members of a genuine workplace community with a need for formal rights of input and, in fact, do not have the transient and casual attachment to an organization characteristic of volunteers. The almost cynical psychological manipulation of employees also seems to fall within the concept of fair reward. For example, it seems that airline employees, after a market expansion program by management, should see their reward in knowing that they are helping more people make their way to family reunions, birthdays, etc. Or publishing company workers should be satisfied in knowing that are advancing the spread of knowledge and progress with increased book sales. One has to wonder if all stakeholders in those two examples were rewarded only with warm thoughts. The authors stress the necessity of "developing and implementing a superior management process to continually improve an organization's business model." Curiously, the authors devote virtually no space to describing any such process. The greater emphasis is on describing a variety of actual business strategies that could be selected such as, adding value, pricing, cutting costs, etc, to effect competitive advantages. The reader will be left to puzzle over the who, when, and how of the structure of a typical, ongoing process of defining the next business innovation. The primary point of the book that businesses should reassess their model, orientation, manner of working, etc can hardly be disputed. There are some brief overviews of some possible strategies to employ with a heavy emphasis on brief descriptions of attempts to implement those strategies. Some of the points are obscured by the endless presentation of examples and in some cases are just not well presented. The book is much too long for the points delivered. After the first of the book describes business model innovation, the last of the book purports to expand the topic. In actuality, the earlier points are redundantly made in another iteration of example companies. The book only minimally delivers. Surely, most any business of any sophistication would be well aware of this material. Furthermore, it is hard to see how this is groundbreaking material as claimed. There is generally a poor development of the concept of stakeholder in relation to business innovation and more broadly. This book is probably best regarded as a basic book on marketing.
Rating:
Summary: A very useful book.
Review: This is one of the most useful business books I have ever read. There are many practical examples which underscore the need for a company to continually look at their business model and to change it to meet customer needs. The book pushes the reader to focus on all customers and stakeholders of the enterprise in a way that I have never seen before. Whether you run a lemonade stand or a multi billion dollar enterprise, it will help you run it better.
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Summary: MARKETING MANAGEMENT: WITH POLYPHONIC LINKS
Review: Crowned with valuable topics, whose orientation included questions and answers, "The Ultimate Competitive Advantage", is surely a product of research and documentation.
Anybody who reads this book would cherish how it bared the anatomy of strategic marketing, while at the same time, adhering to its concise pattern. Students, professionals, and enthusiasts who have flair for marketing should pay close attention to it. Remarkably encouraging is how Parts One and Three (of the book) dissected all the elements of competitive decisions. Various skills and methodologies were explained: with each chapter honing the noble goal of success. Equally important is the simple language used in the definition of terms and concepts.
Overall, this is a nice manual to have at hand. Its contents reflect the refinements and consolidation of various marketing theories. There is hardly any tangible flaw which debased the quality of this book. I am very pleased with its management polyphonics.
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