Hypercompetition (Hardcover)

~ Richard A. D'aveni (Author) "Cost and quality are the staples of competitive positioning..." (more)
Key Phrases: next dynamic strategic interaction, hypercompetitive firms, hypercompetitive behavior, United States, Business Week, General Motors (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

If D'Aveni were not a professor at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School, one could easily imagine that his grandiloquent management guide was meant to be an absurdist spoof of a publishing subgenre not especially teeming with useful or readable works. Drawing almost wholly on secondary sources, however, the deadly earnest author has cobbled together a repetitious handbook that combines a fevered appraisal of a new menace supposedly convulsing the global marketplace with programmatic recommendations for combating it. According to D'Aveni, the present danger is hypercompetition, a notably merciless form of commercial conflict that can be conducted in a host of ways. By the author's account, preternaturally aggressive enterprises may seek to erode, neutralize, or (more likely) obliterate the comparative advantages of their rivals in areas such as market access, cost, know-how, quality, resources, and timing. Moving on from his anecdotal audit of the no-quarter games cutthroat companies play, D'Aveni identifies the distinguishing characteristics of hypercompetition. He then segues into another by-the-numbers exercise known as the New 7-S's, the collective designation for a series of interactive initiatives that may be employed to sustain momentum (rather than equilibrium) in operating environments subject to sudden change. Similar cases in point range from ensuring superior stakeholder satisfaction and strategic soothsaying through simultaneous and sequential strategic thrusts. Offered as well are tedious takes on such techniques as escalation-ladder analysis and price-quality mapping. Even after allowing for the transforming aspects of advanced technologies, D'Aveni's big-picture perspectives and addled advisories could strike most corporate executives as the virtual realities of an academic theorist convinced he can impose order on a perdurably adversarial business world. The jargon-marred text has tabular material throughout. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

Paul N. Clark President, Pharmaceutical Products Division, Abbott Laboratories As a participant in an industry that is changing very rapidly, I enjoyed the numerous examples of how others are coping with fast-paced change. -- Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (March 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0029069386
• ISBN-13: 978-0029069387
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #479,725 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, gets to the heart of true competitive advantage., December 16, 1997

By	[e-mail] - See all my reviews

D'Aveni's view of competition in our global era is right on. Few competitive advantages are truly sustainable, and long-term strategic planning is ineffective. The only long-term sustainable competitive advantage comes from a firm's ability to create short-term advantages that span across numerous competitive arenas - from cost/quality, to know-how, to various types of stronghold positions, to financial muscle. How is that accomplished? By continually disrupting the status quo, changing the rules of the game, by taking an industry in new directions in which competitors' strengths become irrelevant. Strong recommend: lengthy book but "executive summary" is in the 35 page Introduction. Short form paperback version coming out?

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hypercompetition has proven to be a highly useful text., November 3, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

Contrary to some of the more pedantic opionions noted here, Richard D'Aveni's book on Hypercometition has proven to be highly useful in our strategic planning process. While it is true that one may adapt Porter's traditional approaches, Hypercompetition stimulates more focused thought on the competition - who they are, how you can take them out, etc. Deliberately planning to confront, outwit, and defeat your opponent has been decidedly lacking in modern business lore as of late - the current Microsoft case not withstanding. Hypercompetition may not be the sole game in town, but it gives everyone else a run for their money.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new way of thinking, August 2, 1997

By A Customer

I had read Hypercompetiton recently and I realized changing our way of thinking about business is one of the biggest challenges of the end of the centuri. D'Avenis model is a breaktrough description about how the market realy works, and how the managers must become more agressive in order to survive to the atack of foreign new game players. The idea of the unsustainability of the advantages - the core idea of the book- directly destroys Porter's traditional, builded arround researches made inthe 50's. I strongly recomend this book to be readed by all the executives from a company that wants to become -or remain- a market leader. This is and all-new approach that can make the difference. It is maybe the most remarkable book the 90's has been produced. Read it