Competitors: Outwitting, Outmaneuvering, and Outperforming (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "JUST A FEW DECADES AGO, COMPETITION IN MOST INDUSTRIES COULD BE APTLY likened to a traditional horse race in which companies jockey fiercely for market..." (more)
Key Phrases: provisional competencies, implications for the focal firm, microlevel components, Projecting the Competitor's Future Marketplace Strategies, Core Concepts, General Electric (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Does your business, like many of today's leading companies, make these dangerous competitive mistakes?

Take actions as if competitors did not exist

• Collect extensive competitor data but fail to convert it into insights about competitors' current and potential actions
• Fail to project competitors' likely strategies and moves
• Ask the wrong questions about the strategies and actions of current and emerging competitors
• Conduct competitor analysis separately from strategic thinking

To prepare your business for market rivalry in the twenty-first century you need an approach to competitor analysis and intelligence that far surpasses the best practices in most organizations today. You need Competitors.

In Competitors, international strategy guru Liam Fahey provides a new integrated, comprehensive method for analyzing the competition. Called competitor learning, the method is the product of Fahey's 15 years of consulting, researching, and teaching competitor analysis in cutting-edge companies in the United States and Europe. It combines a system for identifying critical competitor data with a series of analytical frameworks to help you develop powerful strategic insights.

Competitors shows you how to:

• Determine exactly what you need to know about competitors
• Describe and analyze competitors' marketplace strategy, alliances and networks, assumptions, assets, capabilities, and culture
• Project competitors' likely strategic moves and outcomes
• Draw critical inferences from limited data about competitors' goals, mindsets, and behaviors
• Use competitor analysis to anticipate changes in customers, channels, suppliers, competitive dynamics, and emerging markets
• Gain valuable insights into how and why your organization might win or lose as it competes against current or potential rivals
• Avoid typical errors associated with traditional competitor analysis

Competitors is an indispensable learning tool for managers who want to get ahead of the competition—both today and for the future. It teaches managers how to know their competition as thoroughly as they know their own organization, and how to use that knowledge to outwit, outmaneuver, and outperform rivals.

Praise for Competitors

"The best hope for a company is to be the first to read this book before its competitors do." —Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing, J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University

"Liam Fahey has written the first richly textured, application-friendly and realistic book on what is often misnamed competitive intelligence . . . a masterful achievement by a power in competitive understanding." —Larry Prusak, Managing Principal, IBM Consulting Group and coauthor of Working Knowledge

"Fahey's Competitors is a lively, dynamic, major break from traditional 'static' strategic analyses. He provides a unique, pragmatic, entrepreneurial approach for seeing where competitors are going in the future—and how to preempt, reconceive or reshape the 'competitive domain' faster and better." —James Brian Quinn, author of Intelligent Enterprise and Innovation Explosion

"We have embraced Liam Fahey's competitor learning framework as the guiding methodology for understanding the current and emerging competition. Competitors is required reading for taking competitive analysis to the next level." —Benjamin R. Fisher, Jr., Director, Corporate Marketplace, PPG Industries, Inc.

"If I could have my way, this book would remain within the hands of a select few. . . armed with these tools, companies can be positioned to outwit, outmaneuver, and outperform their competitors." —Faye Brill, Director, Business Intelligence, Meritor Automotive, Inc. and former president, Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals

From the Publisher

Strategy guru Liam Fahey offers an innovative strategy for outsmarting the competition. His approach, called "competitive learning," combines a series of analysis frameworks--identifying current and future competitors as well as the competitor's mindset, and assessing the competitor's technology, organizational infrastructure, and marketplace strategy--to provide a integrated approach for successfully beating out the competition. By knowing the competition's broader competitive environment and its organizational culture, Fahey reasons, companies can make better decisions, thereby becoming more efficient and productive. Both conceptual and practical, this book offers specific tools and techniques to assess the competition and various ways to avoid many of the organizational errors associated with traditional competitor analysis.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471295620
• ISBN-13: 978-0471295624
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #792,009 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent addition to every strategist's bookshelf., March 11, 1999

By A Customer

The author presents a system for identifying critical competitor data with a series of analytical frameworks to help develop strategic insights. This work is massive in scope and depth. It shows how to assess competitors and use this information to develop strategy. Fahey details how to gather information about every aspect of competitors. Each chapter ends with a brief, helpful summary. An excellent addition to every strategist's bookshelf.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A disapointing book - Decepcionante., March 28, 2002

By	José A. Sánchez Villanueva (Madrid (Spain)) - See all my reviews

I must confess that this has been one of the borest books I have ever read. Padded out with plenty of trivial ideas and lacking with something new. On the good side, it's an overview over most of the topics in competitor analysis but really heavy going to go through.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great strategic value!, March 16, 2000

By	jam mariquit (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

As an avid disciple of strategy and leadership, I find this book a valuable companion to Porter and Sun Tzu. Unlike many CI books which dwells heavily on the "tricks of the trade" and "checklists", Liam Fahey's work provides the reader a set of conceptual frameworks for appraoching the whole CI process. This leads to a better understanding of the competitive environment, its dynamics and opportunities to win. Mr Fahey's thoughts would make a great MBA course. But until then, this book gives the reader a first-mover advantage over those who are still in the dark ages of strategy and competitiveness.