The End of Competitive Advantage
The End of Competitive Advantage

Author: Rita Gunther McGrath

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2013-05-14

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1422191419

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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.

Practical Sustainability Strategies
Practical Sustainability Strategies

Author: Nikos Avlonas

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-12-16

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781118250440

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Strategies that enable organizations to succeed as businesses and as responsible corporate citizens Based on the authors' many years of research and hands-on experience, this book provides tested and proven practical strategies that make it possible for organizations to develop, maintain, or extend their competitive advantage without causing harm to the environment and society. Moreover, it explains how to set goals and objectives and then monitor, measure, and report on progress towards achieving corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability. Most importantly, readers will discover that this can all be accomplished while, at the same time, improving bottom-line profitability. Practical Sustainability Strategies: How to Gain a Competitive Advantage is divided into four parts: Part 1, Introduction to Sustainability, underscores the urgency for organizations to adopt and develop sustainable practices Part 2, Sustainable Strategies, details numerous strategies that have been proven to work, including environmental innovation through biomimicry, green buildings, and green chemistry Part 3, Tools and Metrics, offers practical information on implementing strategies and measuring sustainability and reporting, including global standards and guidelines for managing sustainability, life-cycle analysis, carbon and water footprints such as GRI, GHG Protocol, UN Global Compact Part 4, Conclusion, provides an expert forecast of the future of sustainability Case studies based on the authors' research and fieldwork illustrate how leading companies have implemented each of the sustainability strategies discussed in the book. There's also an appendix with additional case studies exploring various aspects of business practices and sustainability. Practical Sustainability Strategies is ideal as a graduate textbook as well as a reference for business managers. All readers will not only gain a greater appreciation for sustainable development, but also the skills needed to integrate sustainability into all aspects of their organization's business practices.

Competitive Advantage
Competitive Advantage

Author: Michael E. Porter

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-06-30

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 1416595848

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Now beyond its eleventh printing and translated into twelve languages, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations has changed completely our conception of how prosperity is created and sustained in the modern global economy. Porter’s groundbreaking study of international competitiveness has shaped national policy in countries around the world. It has also transformed thinking and action in states, cities, companies, and even entire regions such as Central America. Based on research in ten leading trading nations, The Competitive Advantage of Nations offers the first theory of competitiveness based on the causes of the productivity with which companies compete. Porter shows how traditional comparative advantages such as natural resources and pools of labor have been superseded as sources of prosperity, and how broad macroeconomic accounts of competitiveness are insufficient. The book introduces Porter’s “diamond,” a whole new way to understand the competitive position of a nation (or other locations) in global competition that is now an integral part of international business thinking. Porter's concept of “clusters,” or groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and institutions that arise in particular locations, has become a new way for companies and governments to think about economies, assess the competitive advantage of locations, and set public policy. Even before publication of the book, Porter’s theory had guided national reassessments in New Zealand and elsewhere. His ideas and personal involvement have shaped strategy in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Portugal, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and India, and regions such as Massachusetts, California, and the Basque country. Hundreds of cluster initiatives have flourished throughout the world. In an era of intensifying global competition, this pathbreaking book on the new wealth of nations has become the standard by which all future work must be measured.

A Thousand Shades of Green
A Thousand Shades of Green

Author: Pieter Winsemius

Publisher: Earthscan

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1849770336

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'What does it mean for the environment?' is a strategic corollary of almost any significant business decision today, and companies must take seriously their responsibilities to regulators, customers, employees and the wider society. A Thousand Shades of Green is aimed at business leaders in need of a clear understanding of the key corporate environmental challenges and the insight and vision to meet them - imperatives such as engaging stakeholders and developing partnerships, understanding the policy-making process, forming corporate responses and drafting environmental management strategies - with the promise of genuine competitive advantage for their companies. Drawing on their extensive consultancy experience with some of the most progressive companies around the world, the authors examine why and how businesses must confront the rapidly developing agenda set by environmental constraints and social and regulatory pressure. They identify the corporate environmental challenge with that of change management and advocate a recognition that there is no single strategy or endgame applicable to all companies - there are a thousand shades of green. Only by pursuing thorough, reflective, consistent, competitive and proactive strategies will businesses be able to avoid being embroiled in costly and complex reactive approaches.

Managing Knowledge for Sustained Competitive Advantage
Managing Knowledge for Sustained Competitive Advantage

Author: Susan E. Jackson

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2003-06-03

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0787971308

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This eighteenth volume in the Jossey-Bass Organizational Frontiers Series provides an in-depth examination of how I/O psychologists can help find, recruit, and manage knowledge. The authors explain the nature of different types of knowledge, how knowledge-based competition is affecting organizations, and how these ideas relate to innovation and learning in organizations. They describe the strategies and organizational structures and designs that facilitate the acquisition and development of knowledge. And they discuss how continuous knowledge acquisition and innovation is promoted among individuals and teams and how to foster the creation of new knowledge. In addition, they explain how to assess the climate and culture for organizational learning, measure and monitor knowledge resources at the organizational level, and more.

Competitive Drivers for Improving Future Business Performance
Competitive Drivers for Improving Future Business Performance

Author: Martins, Carlos

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2021-03-05

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1799818454

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The globalized economy, dominated by the diffusion of innovation and social, political, and economic changes, allows people and knowledge to flow without knowing what lies ahead. As new economies emerge and technologies impose significant changes, the internationalization of markets and industries has made defining its delimitation more difficult. Competitive Drivers for Improving Future Business Performance is a conceptualized reference source that discusses the use of digital skills to manage change in volatile contexts and provides fundamental understanding of competitive advantage to guarantee superior performances. To assure this level of performance, a set of choices (drivers) must be created ensuring operational efficiency, innovative products, customer knowledge-base, and focused branding. Featuring research on topics such as consumer experience, strategic leadership, and flexible technologies, this book is ideally designed for managers, executives, entrepreneurs, academicians, consulting professionals, researchers, industry professionals, and students seeking coverage on how to improve competitive performance in an era of uncertainty.

Embedded Sustainability
Embedded Sustainability

Author: Chris Laszlo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1351278312

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Companies know how to meet the demands of shareholder value: years of managerial excellence testify to this achievement. Many also know how to create stakeholder value – through traditional approaches such as CSR and philanthropy which predictably lead to trade-offs and added costs. What remains elusive is discovering is how to meet both shareholder and stakeholder requirements in the core business – without mediocrity and without compromise – creating value for the company that cannot be disentangled from the value it creates for society and the environment. What if sustainability was embedded into the DNA of your organization? How can you incorporate environmental, health and social value into its very core? Many companies, despite their best intentions, "bolt on" sustainability as an afterthought to their core strategies. They trumpet green initiatives and social philanthropy which lie at the margins of the business, with symbolic wins that inadvertently highlight the unsustainability of the rest of their activities. Today's ecological and social pressures require a different business response – one that existing strategy frameworks fail adequately to address. In Embedded Sustainability, authors Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembayeva explain and predict how companies can better leverage global challenges for enduring profit and sustained growth. They introduce the marquis concept of embedded sustainability: the incorporation of environmental, health, and social value into the heartbeat of the product life-cycle with no trade-off in price or quality – no social or green premium. This book helps readers to comprehend and implement the notion of embedded sustainability. At its best, embedded sustainability is invisible, similar to quality. In addition to delivering socially and environmentally conscious products for consumers, it is capable of considerably motivating employees. Most of all, it enables smart companies to create even more value for both their shareholders and stakeholders.

Strategy for Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Strategy for Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Author: Ian Chaston

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-04

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1136325700

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Due to the adverse outcomes of the recent global recession and the public deficit crisis in the USA and Europe, Western companies can expect flattening or declining sales in their domestic markets. They will also face growing competition as Chinese firms seek to block the activities of foreign companies in their domestic market and expand their own operations in overseas markets. Survival and growth for Western companies is unlikely to come from sustaining current business practices based upon utilization of conventional approaches to strategic management; success will depend on exploiting new knowledge to stay ahead of competition. This book examines the strategic issues associated with the entrepreneurial utilization of new knowledge to create innovative products and services, accompanied by the development of leading edge, highly productive internal organizational processes. Through the use of appropriate theories and illustrative case examples, the text is designed to assist managers in Western organizations and business school students understand how to counter the increasing threats that are posed by the globalization of companies from emerging countries such as the BRIC nations.

Strategy for Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Strategy for Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Author: Ian Chaston

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-04

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1136325697

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Due to the adverse outcomes of the recent global recession and the public deficit crisis in the USA and Europe, Western companies can expect flattening or declining sales in their domestic markets. They will also face growing competition as Chinese firms seek to block the activities of foreign companies in their domestic market and expand their own operations in overseas markets. Survival and growth for Western companies is unlikely to come from sustaining current business practices based upon utilization of conventional approaches to strategic management; success will depend on exploiting new knowledge to stay ahead of competition. This book examines the strategic issues associated with the entrepreneurial utilization of new knowledge to create innovative products and services, accompanied by the development of leading edge, highly productive internal organizational processes. Through the use of appropriate theories and illustrative case examples, the text is designed to assist managers in Western organizations and business school students understand how to counter the increasing threats that are posed by the globalization of companies from emerging countries such as the BRIC nations.