The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business

Description

In this book, strategy expert and Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath takes on one of most fundamental and recognized notions in strategy: that of sustainable competitive advantage. She argues this can no longer be the Holy Grail for companies because in a constantly changing environment, deeply ingrained structures and systems designed to extract value actually become a liability. The new path to winning includes taking advantage of shorter term opportunities, as well as relying on new organizational talents like speed and decisiveness. McGrath defines the new transient lifecycle of competitive advantage and shows how successful firms manage through it by using an updated philosophy.

Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School in New York, is one of the world's leading experts on strategy in highly uncertain and volatile environments. She works with both Global 1000 icons and smaller, fast-growing organizations to help them create an entrepreneurial mind-set, drive growth, and recognize when and how to disengage. McGrath has coauthored several popular books, including Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity (2009), MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth (2005), and The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty (2000). In 2009 McGrath was inducted as a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society, an honor accorded to those who have had a significant impact on the field.

"Business leaders should 'have a good look' at Rita McGrath's new book about the importance of a flexible and dynamic business model." -- Entrepreneur magazine (entrepreneur.com) "Unlocking the secrets of competitiveness... In her new book, McGrath debunks the notion of sustainable competitive advantage. It no longer has relevance she says, and instead organizations now need to find ways of leveraging temporary advantages to remain fluid and innovative enough to change tack when those advantages no longer remain." -- Decision "There are a number of valuable lessons in The End of Competitive Advantage that IT leaders can heed and inculcate. It also stands as a challenge for them to shed old, reactionary ways of doing business, and instead assume strategies that differentiate their organizations as innovative thought centers." --CIO Digest "intriguing look at the future" -- BizEd magazine "The End of Competitive Advantage is one of the best business strategy books in recent years. It is readable, well organised and capable of delivering observations that can be absorbed the next strategy meeting. But beyond that it rather importantly updates our assumptions about what will and won't work in that 'fast moving world." -- Engineering and Technology Magazine "The End of Competitive Advantage fits beautifully into the ongoing discussion about what defines successful companies today, and what will continue to in the future." -- 800 CEO READ "The book is well written, well argued, assumes knowledge on the part of the reader without sliding into either corporate speak or the long words of academia, and the argument hard to refute... More importantly, the solutions offered here are immediately actionable." -- Business Traveller (businesstraveller.com) ADVANCE PRAISE for The End of Competitive Advantage: Francisco D'Souza, CEO, Cognizant-- "If competitive advantage was ever sustainable, that time has passed. McGrath's book not only captures the shortcomings of traditional, static models, but lays out the tools that fuel leading performance. The End of Competitive Advantage will give you an entirely new perspective on how to think about strategy." William D. Green, former Chairman, Accenture-- "This smart, readable book addresses today's most significant strategy reality: that we are living in an era of transient advantage. Rita McGrath provides a playbook for this new landscape, showing how you can identify opportunities fast, execute against them at scale, and be unafraid to move on when the situation changes." Sanjay Purohit, Senior Vice President, Infosys Ltd.-- "The urge to hold on to one's established competitive advantage is a vicious trap. McGrath clearly establishes the factors central to building a dynamic competitive edge for an enterprise of tomorrow. Refreshing, insightful, and a must-read." Nancy McKinstry, CEO and Chairman, Executive Board, Wolters Kluwer nv-- "McGrath's groundbreaking work is aptly timed for today's dynamic markets, where winning requires continuous reconfiguration." Klaus C. Kleinfeld, Chairman and CEO, Alcoa-- "The End of Competitive Advantage makes clear that high-performance teams have to stay vigilant. Are your leaders seizing new opportunities or just trying to optimize an outdated strategy? Keep your head up and stay alert, or a transient advantage might pass you by." Clayton M. Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School-- "As a long-time member of the Rita McGrath fan club, I was delighted to see this book. Her approach to strategy is fresh and practical and is exactly what managers need today. It acknowledges competitive realities but shows a clear path forward. It is one of the most illuminating takes on how to deal with disruption that I have ever read."