 | Management Quotes |  |
The fewer the number of competitive variables that are critical, then the fewer will be the number of competitors. If only one factor is critical, then no more than two or three competitors are likely to coexist. Only one will survive if the available market shrinks. This is the “rule of three and four.”
— Bruce D. Henderson
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Strategy
Whenever a front or zone of competitive parity becomes stable or static, then “bourgeois” competition will develop. Such “bourgeois” competition exists when the defense always acts as a hawk and the offense always acts as a dove. This is a mutual recognition of mutually predictable behavior.
— Bruce D. Henderson
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Strategy
Failure to seek patterns in business results in either analysis paralysis or firefighting. The forest becomes lost in the trees. Patterns filter extraneous information, reduce complexity, focus on the essential. Only key patterns of competitive behavior are evaluated.
…Most of the major ideas in business strategy are conceptual rules of thumb about economic competition. The experience curve, the growth-share matrix, average costing, and the environments matrix are all rules of thumb. They help to pattern competitive behavior. They point toward the relevant and away from the extraneous, and suggest probable courses of action. They simplify, but cannot substitute for, the thought process.
…A learning organization can both refine its pattern recognition and revise its rules of thumb as business competition evolves. The failure of most major businesses does not involve bad initial play; at one time they grew and prospered. Rather it is a failure to learn and adapt as the business changes.
— Rudyard L. Istvan
1 Comment » Posted by Administrator / Strategy
The fact is that some markets yield more opportunities for advantage than others, and some none at all. Some companies invest heavily in pursuit of the mirage of a secure future competitive edge. Nowhere is this more likely to end in disappointment than where there is blind faith in the value of market share or in the rewards of technological superiority.
— Anthony W. Miles
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Competition and Strategy
Many executives believe that competitive advantage is best achieved by providing the most value for the lowest cost. This is the traditional paradigm for corporate success. Providing the most value for the lowest cost in the least amount of time is the new paradigm for corporate success.
— George Stalk, Jr.
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Competition and Strategy
The mind-set that accompanies the victory need is completely different from the one that accompanies the need for achievement. The need for achievement mind-set focuses primarily on end users or customers and how best to meet their needs. The victory need mind-set focuses on competitors and how best to out-perform them. This latter perception leads to organisational behaviour with negative consequences for all concerned: the organisation, the individual who works for the organisation, the customer and, of course, the competitors.
— Charles Lines
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Organizational Behavior
Companies tend to give attention to those innovation acquisitions which are complex, but underestimate, or are unsure how to handle, those deals surrounded by uncertainty.
— Saikat Chaudhuri
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / M & A
People do care about the truth of an idea, but they also want to tell stories that produce strong emotion, and that second tendency sometimes gets in the way of the first.
If we could understand what kinds of stories succeed beyond all expectations, even when they are not true, we might be able to take legitimate information, about health for example, and change people’s behavior for the better.
— Chip Heath
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Communication and Organizational Behavior
In “push” systems…the core assumptions are that companies and other institutions can anticipate demand and that mobilizing scarce resources in previously specified ways is the most efficient and reliable way to meet it. But the efficiency of push systems comes at a stiff price, for they require companies to specify, monitor, and enforce detailed activities and tasks. This rigidity necessarily restricts the number and diversity of the participants in push models, thus limiting the innovation and learning that can take place in them. It also tends to turn workers into mere instruments of management at a time when self-directed effort from a broad range of employees is ever more essential to big corporations.
— John Seely Brown, John Hagel
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Management and Strategy
People are not the most important asset of a company - they are the company. Everything else is an asset.
— Adrian Levy
No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Human Resources and Management