Strategy:Competitive Strategy as a narrative Story

 

《Competitive Strategy as a narrative Story》is a Japanese business book written by Kusunoki Ken.It is definitely a great book for people who are totally beginners of strategy.But,you have to takes your much time to read  (around 525 papes),it is quite hard to finish it if you are busy usually.However,the following are the main ideas of the book and hope you can acquire something from it.

1.Basic structures of competitiveness

  

 How to sharpen the competitive edge of a company?Well,to put it more simply,there are 2 major elements that are related to that:Strategy positioning and Organisational ability.

  Strategic positioning(SP):As a leader,you have to consider what kinds of action you take and what you don't.In other words,you have to sacrifice one thing from these two elements--Cost and Profit,in which they cannot exist mutually for long-term prospects(short term is fine)

  Organisational capability(OC):basically,it is a foundation of a company.Work culture,atmosphere,value chain,management,sources and so on,are immensely crucial to the competitiveness and most significantly,it makes your strategies that are difficult to follow for other companies.

  SP+OC=Difference,which is the most fundamental to competitive strategy.

  (Note:competitiveness structure in industries,basically,is about depending on the thrive of a industry if you want to succeed)

2.Different levels of competitiveness

  the picture shows that there are 5 levels of competitiveness.We just focus on Level 3 and Level 4

  Level 3 strategy story:just like the above mentioned,it consists of SP and OC. Also,we should pay attention to the story's length(long term), width(value chain) and consistency.

 Level 4 Core:it is a bit similar to the concept of destructive innovation-take unreasonable action,ohers feel abnormal,eventually get success.Just take StarBucks as an example.We all know that the "third space" is the major attribution to StarBucks' big success.There are several components of the "third space"：atmosphere,location,operation and workers'attitude.Most people think that atmosphere and location contribute the most to the success.Yes,at the first glance,it is pretty obvious and normal.People follow it but many of them failed at the end.Why?Because of Operation.they got the wrong things.

  StarBucks stores are mostly regular chains-managed and invested by the headquarters in different places.It looks quit weird and unreasonable at the first glance since such a pattern will not only add extra pressure on the headquarters（ increase workload）,but also cost much more money(No cost leadership strategy at all）.Yet,such a business pattern,can let more workers(baristas) get the understanding of the concept of "the third space",They have to follow the rules given by the headquarters and nurture it by themselves.As a result, due to this abnormal behaviour,it contributes the biggest part of success to StarBucks as no competitor are willing to follow it.

The following picture can show that why competitors will fail even they try to copy the strategies from successful firms:

Of course,the book gives other examples like Amazon,Book-Off and Mabuchi Motor to illustrate different concepts of strategy.I am sure you will become more familiar with strategy after finishing this book .😎😎

 Some Images from Google