Competitive strategy

Managers should make environmental investments for the same reason they make other investments: because they expect them to deliver positive returns or to reduce risks.

Many managers of service businesses are aware that the strategic management (by which I mean the total process of selecting and implementing a corporate strategy) of service businesses is different from that of manufacturing businesses. This article discusses how pure service businesses are different from product-oriented businesses and why they require different strategic thinking. A […]

To maintain competitive advantage in a multi-crisis world, operations and strategy must become even more intertwined.

When business conditions change, the most successful companies are often the slowest to adapt. To avoid being left behind, executives must understand the true sources of corporate inertia.

It tells you where an industry is going.

Less than a decade after the frantic merger activity of the late 1960s, we are again in the midst of a major wave of corporate acquisitions. In contrast to the 1960s, when acquirers were mainly freewheeling conglomerates, the merger movement in the 1970s includes such long-established giants of U.S. industry as General Electric, Gulf Oil, […]

Six ways savvy leaders can use them to gain a competitive advantage.

Data on who's investing the most, the explosive growth of headsets, and the most popular uses of AR.

A second generation of electronic commerce is emerging, one that will be shaped more by strategy than by experimentation. The battle for competitive advantage will be waged along three dimensions: reach, affiliation, and richness.

The past decade reveals managers’ growing awareness of the need to incorporate technological issues within strategic decision making. They have increasingly discovered that technology and strategy are inseparable. For technology has an inner logic that simply must be considered in a company’s strategic planning—that process of creating a concept of the business it is in, […]

Not every challenge requires an algorithmic approach.

It’s fashionable today to enthuse over globalized markets and cite glowing examples of standardized marketing winners around the world. True, some markets are globalizing, and more companies are taking advantage of them with signal success. But the rosy reports of these triumphs usually neglect to mention the complexities and risks involved; for every victory in […]

A major shift is occurring in the nature of global competition, but it’s widely misunderstood. Emerging markets are no longer competing solely on price—by offering the lowest-cost manufacturing, for instance. Rather, they are increasingly competing with sophisticated skills in key sectors like health care, software, entertainment, consumer products, and manufacturing. They’re leveraging a fast-growing ability […]

And every stakeholder has a role.

Consistent innovation is the key to market leadership. Outstanding companies know that and build their success on it. And other organizations can do the...

While in-depth analysis of competitors and suppliers is de rigueur in formulating strategy, surprisingly few companies pay much attention to firms that sell complementary products and services.

Many companies can dramatically improve their products and services by using machine learning-an application of artificial intelligence that involves...

A fascinating short piece in Business Week reported that netbook computers are increasingly popular, and suggested that they may be undercutting or cannibalizing sales of personal computers – particularly the popular laptops whose increased popularity has hurt Dell so much, and which are highly profitable for computer manufacturers. My fellow Harvard Business blogger Scott Anthony […]

The service sector, now nearly three quarters of the U.S. gross national product, may be headed toward the same global noncompetitiveness as manufacturing....

It will ensure your company can absorb stress, recover critical functionality, and thrive in new circumstances.