Strategic Supremacy : How Industry Leaders Create Growth, Wealth, and Power through Spheres of Influence

by Richard A. D'aveni

• ISBN13: 9780684871806
• ISBN10: 0684871807
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-04
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

Are upstart competitors taking deadly aim at your company's products and markets? Richard A. D'Aveni, author of the famous attacker's handbook Hypercompetition, presents coun-terrevolutionary strategies and tactics that any industry leader or established company can use to defend itself against revolutionaries, disrupters, or hypercompetitors. The secret lies in making the rules, not breaking them, D'Aveni says, because rule makers still rule. Arguing that "profits and prosperity come not from revolution but stability and orderly change," D'Aveni presents a commanding framework that will enable any resource-rich or clever defender to gain Strategic Supremacy by being first to define the playing field. D'Aveni demonstrates how global powerhouses such as Disney, Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble have achieved preeminence by reconceptualizing their product portfolios as powerful competitive arsenals he calls "spheres of influence." Essentially a new way to compete by restructuring portfolios around a core geographic/product market, spheres enable any company to influence the behavior and positioning of rivals. In immensely readable prose, D'Aveni describes how prevailing spheres of influence can be used to create legal business equivalents to a "concert of powers" and other industry structures that mix cooperation with competition. Just one of the potent functions of a corporate sphere, D'Aveni shows, is to contain competitors of equal size (as NBC contained ABC). Spheres can also be used to stabilize an entire industry's global power system. A glance at the detailed table of contents will provide a sense of the wealth of new information contained in this essential handbook of global warfare, including "how-to" tools the reader will need to measure and map the pattern of competitive pressure in any industry and to interpret the meaning and strategic implications of these pressure patterns for his or her position within the industry's power hierarchy.

Author Biography

Richard A. D'Aveni, Professor of Strategic Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, is a leading expert on competitive strategy and high-growth companies and a popular speaker to audiences of senior executives in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Fortune described his previous book Hypercompetition as "the modern-day analogue to The Art of War."

Table of Contents

Preface: The Art of Strategy	xxi
Introduction	1	(3)
Conquering Chaos and Fashioning A Favorable World	4	(5)
The Heart of Strategic Supremacy: The Sphere of Influence	6	(3)
The Unique Nature of Strategic Supremacy	9	(5)
The Power of Perception	10	(1)
Capturing Hearts and Minds	11	(1)
Fashioning a Favorable World through Forms of Co-opetition	12	(2)
The Supremes: Today's Global Great Powers	14	(3)
The Sphere of Influence: Rethinking Your Product Portfolio To Achieve Strategic Supremacy	17	(38)
Veni, Vidi, Vici	17	(5)
Looking Beyong Traditional Portfolios To Spheres of Influence	22	(3)
Constructing Your Sphere	25	(7)
Core or Center of Interest	29	(1)
Vital Interests	29	(1)
Buffer Zones	30	(1)
Pivotal Zones	30	(1)
Forward Positions	31	(1)
Putting the Pieces Together	31	(1)
Assigning Strategic Intent to Every Zone In Your Sphere	32	(5)
Positioning Your Sphere for the Future: Ugly Ducklings, Power Vacuums, and Outcasts	36	(1)
Empires of the Mind: The Role of Ideology In Creating a Cohesive Sphere	37	(4)
Power Projection: Using Your Power To Beget Power	41	(6)
The Sphere and Preeminence in the Greater Competitive Space	42	(5)
The Big Picture: Mapping Your Sphere To Evaluate Your Strength, Cohesiveness, and Future	47	(8)
Leading the Evolution: Circumventing Competitive Compression To Grow The Power of Your Sphere	55	(37)
The Rise and Fall ... And Rise of Spheres	56	(7)
Five Natural Growth Patterns: ``The Desperate Desire To Grow''	63	(4)
Developers	63	(1)
Pioneers	64	(1)
Nomads	65	(1)
Discoverers	65	(1)
Opportunists	66	(1)
What Comes Natural to Some Is Unnatural for Others	66	(1)
Adjusting Your Natural Growth Strategy: There's No Place Like Home ... Or Is There?	67	(3)
Your Strength and Commitment to the Core	68	(1)
The Pace of Growth in Your Core	69	(1)
The Capabilities of Your Organization	69	(1)
The Negative Synergies Created	70	(1)
Competitive Compression: For Every Action, There Is An Equal and Opposite Reaction	70	(9)
Four Patterns of Competitive Compression	71	(1)
Managed Containment	71	(3)
Gradual Constriction	74	(1)
Sequential Stripping	75	(3)
Toppling Dominoes	78	(1)
Circumventing and Countering Competitive Compression	79	(11)
The Sibylline Books: The Challenge Of Evolving With Imperfect Vision	90	(2)
Paradigms For Power: Routing Your Resources To Unleash the Potential Of Your Sphere	92	(48)
Supercharged and Power-Packed	92	(5)
The Power of Resource Routing: Knowing Where And When To Move Your Assets	97	(4)
The Walled Sphere: Good Fences Make Good Business	101	(3)
Wealth Accumulation through Feudal Power	102	(1)
The ``Walled'' School of Power Projection	102	(1)
Norms of Behavior Based on Isolationism	103	(1)
Inherent Challenges: When the Walls Come Tumbling Down	103	(1)
The Fluid Sphere: Marauders, Guerrillas, And Shifting Boundaries	104	(7)
Wealth Accumulation through Temporary Advantages	105	(1)
The ``Fluid'' School of Power Projection	106	(2)
Norms of Behavior Based on Militarism and Expansionism	108	(2)
Inherent Challenges: Running Out of Steam ... and Room	110	(1)
The Colonial Sphere: What Goes Around Comes Around	111	(5)
Wealth Accumulation through Cross-Subsidization	112	(1)
The ``Colonial'' School of Power Projection	112	(2)
Norms of Behavior Based on Mercantilism and Imperialism	114	(1)
Inherent Challenges: Trading Off between the Core and Periphery	115	(1)
The Advanced Sphere: All For One and One For All	116	(7)
Wealth Accumulation through Reassembling the Pieces	117	(3)
The ``Advanced'' School of Power Projection	120	(1)
Norms of Behavior Based on Pragmatism	121	(1)
Inherent Challenges: Crossing the Line of Acceptable Behavior	122	(1)
Reaping the Rewards of Your Resource Routing Pattern ... Without Sowing the Seeds of Destruction	123	(7)
The Parade of Paradigms For Power	130	(10)
Dousing Disruption: Using Counter-Revolutionary Tactics, Weatherproofing Strategies, and Competitive Cooperatives To Manage Insurrection	140	(39)
Surviving the Revolution	141	(2)
Anheuser-Busch: A Revolution Was Brewing	143	(2)
The Nature of Disruptive Ideologies	145	(6)
Competence-Destroying Disruptions	146	(1)
Competence-Enhancing Disruptions	147	(3)
To Dampen or Adopt? That Is the Question	150	(1)
Five Counterrevolutionary Tactics To Neutralize Competence-Destroying Disruptions	151	(8)
Preempting	151	(2)
Shaping	153	(1)
Absorbing	154	(2)
Dampening	156	(1)
Hedging	156	(2)
Counterrevolutionary Combinations	158	(1)
``Weather Proofing'' Your Sphere: Shifting Paradigms To Acclimate To Patterns of Disruption	159	(9)
The Equilibrium Environment	161	(1)
The Fluctuating Equilibrium Environment	162	(1)
The Punctuated Equilibrium Environment	163	(2)
The Disequilibrium Environment	165	(1)
Patterns of Disruption and Picking Your Paradigm for Power	166	(2)
Competitive Cooperatives: Joining Forces With Other Great Powers	168	(8)
Concert of Powers	168	(2)
Polarized Blocs	170	(3)
Collective Security Arrangements	173	(3)
Keeping the Lid On Revolution	176	(3)
Competitive Configuration: Shaping Great Power Relationships To Gain Preeminence For Your World View	179	(56)
Napoleon's Game of Russian Roulette	179	(2)
Reconfiguring Cyberspace	181	(3)
Mastering the Art of Competitive Configuration	184	(2)
Great Power Relationships: How Spheres Interact One-On-One	186	(6)
Toyota vs. General Motors: Driving Each Other to Distraction	187	(5)
Great Power Triangles: Interacting One-On-One-On-One	192	(5)
Changing Diapers: The Shifting Borders in the Baby Market	193	(4)
Forming Triangles: Choosing Your Targets and Allies	197	(7)
Selecting Your Target	198	(4)
Choosing Your Allies	202	(2)
Aligning Interests To Create, Empower, And Maintain Effective Triangles	204	(14)
Changing the Interests and Goals of Other Great Powers	206	(2)
Preventing Dysfunctional and Unstable Triangles	208	(9)
Lock Up Alliances---But Don't Throw Away the Key	217	(1)
Strategies For Unfreezing and Constructing Competitive Configurations	218	(7)
General Motors Revisited: Achieving A Preeminent World View	225	(10)
Going Global with Your World View	230	(4)
From General Motors to General of the Grand Army of France	234	(1)
Global Power Systems: Intervening In Your Industry To Stabilize Or Transform The Distribution of Power	235	(49)
War and Peace	235	(4)
Business Bismarcks and Modern-Day Matternichs	237	(2)
Pressure Maps: Seeing the ``Invisible Hand'' That Squeezes the Competition	239	(16)
Airlines: Dogfights and Diplomacy	240	(2)
Drawing a Pressure Map	242	(2)
A Concert of Airline Powers	244	(1)
Three Tiers for the Airlines	245	(2)
Understanding the Flight Path	247	(3)
Cascades and Consolidation	250	(1)
Insights from Pressure Mapping	251	(2)
Power and Competitive Configuration Are Reciprocal	253	(2)
Dynamic Stability: Using Power Plays To Absorb Pressure and Power Flucuations	255	(14)
Stabilizing Mechanisms	256	(1)
Dynamic Stability in a Multipolar World	257	(3)
Dynamic Stability in a Bipolar World	260	(3)
Dynamic Stability in a Unipolar World	263	(1)
Dynamic Stability in the Airline Industry	264	(5)
Global Power Projection: Co-Opetition In Action	269	(6)
On the Razor's Edge	273	(2)
Power Surges and Rebalancing Strategies	275	(6)
Please Fasten Your Safety Belts: Turbulence Ahead	277	(4)
Using Strategy To Shape the Future	281	(3)
Final Thoughts: Dynamic Strategic Supremacy	284	(3)
Good Guys Finish First	284	(1)
Envisioning the Future	285	(1)
``Seek What They Sought''	286	(1)
A Self-Assessment: Will you Make History or be History?	287	(4)
Sphere of Influence	287	(1)
Value Leadership in Your Core	288	(1)
Mapping Tools and MIS	288	(1)
Competitive Configuration and the Global Power System	288	(3)
Appendices	291	(8)
Appendix A	291	(4)
Appendix B	295	(4)
Notes	299	(4)
Index	303	(8)
About the Author	311