R. Preston McAfee – författare

Competitive Solutions is an entertaining and wideranging introduction to successful business methods applied to a variety of real-world situations. Rejecting the one-size-fits-all premise that underlies so many guides to business strategy, Preston McAfee develops the intellectual tools and insights needed to confront many marketplace problems. Drawing on his broad experience as a consultant for major U.S. companies, as well as extensive research, McAfee emphasizes cooperation, pricing, litigation, and antitrust as vital to a firm's competitive posture--and focuses more attention on these elements than do most business strategy accounts. McAfee begins by considering strategy as successfully applied by America OnLine, an example that introduces many of the tools discussed in greater depth throughout the book. From here he moves to industry analysis: By examining the context for developing a strategy, he points out uses of positioning and differentiation that enable a firm to weaken price competition and deter rivals from stealing customers.McAfee's exploration of a product's life cycle proves an invaluable guide to positioning new technology in order to maximize the potential for future customers. In the centerpiece of the book, McAfee lays out a how-to manual for cooperation, providing tactics crucial for setting standards, lobbying the government, and fostering industry growth. Writing in a conversational manner, McAfee also addresses such deep topics as organizational design and employee compensation and incentives. More detailed discussions examine antitrust enforcement, which is an increasingly important constraint on strategy, as well as strategies for pricing, bidding, signaling, and bargaining. This book is a fascinating examination of modern business strategy and its application in many different settings. Students of business and economics--as well as executives and managers--will recognize Competitive Solutions as an indispensable resource as well as a definitive vision of the strategic firm: one in which each element of company strategy reinforces the other elements.

Could the existing level of government services by provided at a lower cost? This study presents a convincing argument for incentive contracts as a means to this end. In a typical market economy, payments from the government to firms account for about one-half of government spending (excluding transfer payments). By changing the way in which a government pays the firms from which it procures goods and services, it would be possible to maintain the existing array of government programs at a lower price. The major finding of this study is that governments could significantly reduce their expenditures by making extensive use of incentive contracts where they currently use either fixed-price contracts or cost-plus contracts. An incentive contract shares cost overruns and cost underruns between the government and the contractor according to a predetermined ratio. An incentive contract stimulates competition among the firms bidding for the contract and shares the project''s risk between the government and the selected firm, while giving the contractor incentives to keep incurred costs low. In addition to advocating the use of incentive contracts, the study analyses the consequences of preferential treatment for domestic content over foreign content in government procurement, discusses the choice for a government agency between producing a commodity or service in-house and contracting for its provision with a private firm, and examines the experience with contracting of both the Ontario government and the United States Department of Defense in order to draw lessons for government contracting in general.