Richard A. D'aveni – författare

In this pathbreaking book, Richard D'Aveni shows how competitive moves and countermoves escalate with such ferocity today that the traditional sources of competitive advantage can no longer be sustained. D'Aveni argues that a company must fundamentally shift its strategic focus. He constructs a compre-hensive model that shows how firms move up "escalation ladders" as advantage is continually created, eroded, destroyed, and recreated through strategic maneuvering in "four arenas" of competition. Using detailed examples from hypercompetitive industries such as computers, automobiles, and pharmaceuticals, D'Aveni demon-strates how hypercompetitive firms succeed by disrupting the status quo and creating a continuous series of temporary advantages. With its emphasis on real-world experiences of corporate warfare, this abridged paperback edition of D'Aveni's masterwork will be essential reading for scholars and managers alike - a perfect introduction to the battlefield of hypercompetitive rivalries.

General Motors and IBM have been battered to their cores. Jack Welch, the chairman of General Electric, called the frenzied competition of the 1980's "a white knuckle decade" and said the 1990s would be worse. In this pathbreaking book that will define this new age of "hypercompetition," Richard D'Aveni reveals how competitive moves and countermoves escalate with such ferocity today that the traditional sources of competitive advantage can no longer be sustained. To compete in this dynamic environment, D'Aveni argues that a company must fundamentally shift its strategic focus. He constructs a brilliant operational model that shows how firms move up "escalation ladders" as advantage is continually created, eroded, destroyed, and recreated through strategic maneuvering in four arenas of competition. Using this "Four Arena" analysis, D'Aveni explains how competitors engage in a struggle for control by seeking leadership in the arenas of "price and quality," "timing and know-how," "stronghold creation/invasion," and "deep pockets." Winners set the pace in each of these four competitive battlegrounds. Using hundreds of detailed examples from hypercompetitive industries such as computers, software, automobiles, airlines, pharmaceuticals, toys and soft drinks, D'Avenie demonstrates how hypercompetitive firms succeed in dynamic markets by disrupting the status quo and creating a continuous series of temporary advantages. They seize the initiative, D'Aveni explains, by employing a set of strategies he calls the "New 7-S's" Superior Stakeholder Satisfaction, Strategic Soothsaying, Speed, Surprise, Shifting the Rules of Competition, Signaling Strategic Intent, and Simultaneous and Sequential Thrusts. Paradoxically, firms must destroy their competitive advantages to gain advantage, D'Aveni shows. Long-term success depends not on sustaining an advantage through a static, long-term strategy, but instead on formulating a dynamic strategy for the creating, destruction, and recreation of short-term advantages. America must embrace the new reality of hypercompetition, D'Aveni concludes in a compelling analysis of the potential chilling effect of American antitrust laws on competitiveness. This masterful book, essentially an operating manual of strategy and tactics for a new era, will be required reading for managers, planners, consultants, academics, and students of hypercompetitive industries.

Are upstart competitors taking deadly aim at your company's products and markets? Richard A. D'Aveni, author of the famous attacker's handbook Hypercompetition, presents coun-terrevolutionary strategies and tactics that any industry leader or established company can use to defend itself against revolutionaries, disrupters, or hypercompetitors. The secret lies in making the rules, not breaking them, D'Aveni says, because rule makers still rule. Arguing that "profits and prosperity come not from revolution but stability and orderly change," D'Aveni presents a commanding framework that will enable any resource-rich or clever defender to gain Strategic Supremacy by being first to define the playing field. D'Aveni demonstrates how global powerhouses such as Disney, Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble have achieved preeminence by reconceptualizing their product portfolios as powerful competitive arsenals he calls "spheres of influence." Essentially a new way to compete by restructuring portfolios around a core geographic/product market, spheres enable any company to influence the behavior and positioning of rivals. In immensely readable prose, D'Aveni describes how prevailing spheres of influence can be used to create legal business equivalents to a "concert of powers" and other industry structures that mix cooperation with competition. Just one of the potent functions of a corporate sphere, D'Aveni shows, is to contain competitors of equal size (as NBC contained ABC). Spheres can also be used to stabilize an entire industry's global power system. A glance at the detailed table of contents will provide a sense of the wealth of new information contained in this essential handbook of global warfare, including "how-to" tools the reader will need to measure and map the pattern of competitive pressure in any industry and to interpret the meaning and strategic implications of these pressure patterns for his or her position within the industry's power hierarchy.