Competitive advantage

If you're thinking about starting your own business or revitalizing an already established company, this book shows you how to position yourself as a pioneer, adopting what John L. Nesheim calls a competitive edge.

What is a competitive advantage? It's an advantage so great over your competitors that it becomes unequal. If you have an idea for a new venture, if your goal is to dominate a new territory, if you focus on a market no one else has yet seen, then you hold this advantage.

Nesheim explains the concept, shows how to develop it, and even provides examples of how to use it to create new world-class businesses. He also presents the ways in which success—through the force of differential competition—has driven the ideas that have become revered brands and standards for global industry.

To show how to use competitive advantage to your advantage, the author proposes a very clear model, based essentially on three foundations:

1. Outsource all the activities you are not good at

2. Focus on activities that can be differentiated

3. Look for a unique and consistent characteristic that cannot be copied

Several case studies exemplify the integration of these three principles with other essential elements and the development of competitive differentiation in a wide range of areas—marketing, sales, operations—and in various ways. Pager manufacturer RIM, for example, reached the top of the mobile email services market with the BlackBerry, leveraging the competitive advantage that only it possessed the technology and infrastructure to develop pagers. Meanwhile, the giant Dell created its differentiation by focusing on product placement: in the first phase of the personal computer revolution, Michael Dell saw direct-to-consumer sales as a highly undervalued market segment and focused on serving it in the best possible way. Today, the company is the world's largest PC supplier.

Competitive Advantage is an essential guide for all managers responsible for launching a new product or service, as well as for all current and future entrepreneurs planning to start a new business. Discover how to leverage the strength of this differentiator, stand out from the competition, and build a prosperous, solid, and lasting business.