The U.S. today faces the most complex and challenging security environment in recent memory— even as it deals with growing constraints on its ability to respond to threats. Its most consequential challenge is the rise of China, which increasingly has the capability to deny the U.S. access to areas of vital national interest and to undermine alliances that have underpinned regional stability for over half a century. Thus, the time is right for the U.S. to adopt a long-term strategy for dealing with China; one that includes but is not limited to military means, and that fully includes U.S. allies in the region. This book uses the theory and practice of peacetime great-power strategic competition to derive recommendations for just such a strategy. After examining the theory of peacetime strategic competition, it assesses the U.S.-China military balance in depth, considers the role of America's allies in the region, and explores strategies that the U.S could adopt to improve its strategic position relative to China over the long term.
Agile manufacturing is defined as the capability of surviving and prospering in a competitive environment of continuous and unpredictable change by reacting quickly and effectively to changing markets, driven by customer-designed products and services. Critical to successfully accomplishing AM are a few enabling technologies such as the standard for the exchange of products (STEP), concurrent engineering, virtual manufacturing, component-based hierarchical shop floor control system, information and communication infrastructure, etc.The scope of the book is to present the undergraduate and graduate students, senior managers and researchers in manufacturing systems design and management, industrial engineering and information technology with the conceptual and theoretical basis for the design and implementation of AMS. Also, the book focuses on broad policy directives and plans of agile manufacturing that guide the monitoring and evaluating the manufacturing strategies and their performance. A problem solving approach is taken throughout the book, emphasizing the context of agile manufacturing and the complexities to be addressed.
It is scarcely five years since the first edition of this book, a milestone in the strategy-oriented approach to intellectual property at the global level, appeared and was quickly and widely welcomed as virtually an intellectual property agenda for the 21st century. This second edition includes a judicious update of the original data and analysis in light of the significant movement forward that has taken place over the past few years in many of the critical areas that shape the competitive strategies in the use of IP Rights. The authors have lost none of their conviction of the necessity to enhance awareness of the techno-economic effects of intellectual property rights protection on enterprise competitiveness and national growth and development. The book provides a panoramic but detailed view of the worldands intellectual property system that embraces socioeconomic, cultural and technological development in its scope, clarifying the pitfalls and challenges that the system presents even as it promises to improve the quality of life on our planet. The authors both internationally respected and honoured for their work in elucidating the economic necessity of an intellectual property system that can inspire universal confidence, emphasize the imperative of international competiveness in knowledge-based technology. In their orderly presentation of the key issues that promote the real benefits (not yet achieved) of a truly effective regime of intellectual property rights they discuss such factors as the following: the use of intellectual property as an integral part of business strategy; optimal utilization of intellectual property assets; the incentives and rewards of andfair playand in the marketplace; facilitation of widespread diffusion and adoption of the fruits of creativity and innovation; the crucial role of small and medium enterprises; the need at every level for deliberate incentive policies that encourage creativity and invention; strict enforcement of intellectual property rights; creating linkages between intellectual property stakeholders; and use of patent information for forecasting technology trends. These issues and recommendations and more are all discussed in a framework that highlights each of the major areas of knowledge in which intellectual property rights are most insistently invoked today, such as the digital economy, e-commerce, Internet domain names, database protection, protection of plant varieties, design of integrated circuits, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Ultimately, however, this outstanding workands most important contribution lies in its vision of the organic corporation of governments, institutions, supranational organizations, multinational corporations, small and medium enterprises, and civil society as they collectively fashion a 21st century in which creativity and innovation are enabled to convert knowledge into wealth and social good. For this reason, as well as for its richly detailed treatment of trends and current reality in the field, this new, updated edition of Intellectual Property and Competitive Strategies in the 21stCentury will continue to be read and put to good use by business people, international lawyers, government officials, and interested academics in all parts of the world.
Between 2002 and 2008, Japan's economy saw constant expansion, a record among the world's advanced economies and Japan's longest period of economic growth since World War II. This remarkable achievement came about because of a transformation of Japanese business practices. This transformation was guided by strategies that enabled Japan's leading corporations, previously diversified to an exceptionally high degree, to become leaner, more nimble, and more competitive at home and in the global economy. In Choose and Focus, the first in-depth account of this strategic inflection point in Japanese business, Ulrike Schaede argues that the emerging practices and attitudes have created a New Japan. Drawing on profiles of several corporations, including Panasonic, Takeda and Astellas, Softbank, kakaku.com, and SBI E*Trade, Schaede explains how the fundamental principles of Japan's economy have been overturned. "Choose and focus" strategies, whereby corporations concentrate on core areas and spin off unrelated businesses, have completely altered the strategic logic of Japan's previous industrial architecture. These surprisingly aggressive moves, Schaede finds, have created new market opportunities for start-up enterprises and foreign investors, as well as a wave of mergers, acquisitions, and hostile takeovers that have shaken Japanese companies out of complacency. Unlike the advances made by Japanese firms in the 1970s and 1980s, the current transformation is taking root in component and materials industries rather than in consumer products. Because of the relative obscurity of the changes and the overshadowing story of China's ascent, the Japanese corporate revolution has gone largely unnoticed among Western observers. Choose and Focus is required reading for anyone doing business in Japan or trying to understand how contemporary Japanese business works and how Japanese corporations have reinvented themselves to face the challenges—and realize the opportunities—of the 21st century.
This is a guide to the principles of competitive business strategy. The book draws, chapter by chapter, on illustrative instances and examples involving vigorous competition between determined rivals in business. It offers helpful ideas for devising ways to prevail in confrontation with business competitors. Based on the course on competitive strategy taught by the author over the past ten years to executives and undergraduates, the book provides a thought-provoking complement to standard textbooks. Each chapter addresses a key strategic principle, richly illustrated with topical business examples, and followed by student questions at the end of the chapter. Most contemporary accounts of strategic thinking concentrate on preserving a business in steady state through thinking about economics, markets and business development, rather than dealing directly with psychological confrontation between business rivals.
Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business? Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now. In short, strategy is stuck. Most leaders are using frameworks that were designed for a different era of business and based on a single dominant idea—that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Once the premise on which all strategies were built, this idea is increasingly irrelevant. Now, Columbia Business School professor and globally recognized strategy expert Rita Gunther McGrath argues that it’s time to go beyond the very concept of sustainable competitive advantage. Instead, organizations need to forge a new path to winning: capturing opportunities fast, exploiting them decisively, and moving on even before they are exhausted. She shows how to do this with a new set of practices based on the notion of transient competitive advantage. This book serves as a new playbook for strategy, one based on updated assumptions about how the world works, and shows how some of the world’s most successful companies use this method to compete and win today. Filled with compelling examples from “growth outlier” firms such as Fujifilm, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Infosys, Yahoo! Japan, and Atmos Energy, The End of Competitive Advantage is your guide to renewed success and profitable growth in an economy increasingly defined by transient advantage.
“Helps to articulate those pressing strategic questions necessary in formulating―and executing―American strategy in this critical part of the world.” ―Military Review Some of the United States’ greatest challenges over the coming decades are likely to emanate from the Asia-Pacific region, with China’s and India’s rise and the persistence of militant Islam in parts of South and Central Asia, and the threat of nuclear proliferation continuing in fits and starts. If America is to meet these challenges comprehensively, strategists will have to learn more about Asia, and Asian scholars, policymakers, and analysts will need to understand better the enduring and timeless principles of strategy. Based on the premise therefore that the increasing strategic weight of the Asia-Pacific region warrants greater attention from both scholars and practitioners alike, Strategy in Asia: The Past, Present, and Future of Regional Security aims to marry the fields of strategic studies and Asian studies in order to help academics and practitioners to begin addressing these challenges. The book uses the lenses of geography, culture, and economics to examine in depth the strategic context that Asia presents to the major nations of the region—including the U.S. as a Pacific nation—and the strategic scenarios that may well play out in the region in the future. Specific attention is paid to Asia as a warfighting environment, and to the warfighting traditions and current postures of the major nations. “Opens windows into the key lenses of strategic studies namely, history, geography and politics, and secondarily, culture and economics.” —Asian Politics and Policy
