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Competitive Solutions: The Strategist's Toolkit

(Paperback)


Publishing Details

Full Title:

Competitive Solutions: The Strategist's Toolkit

Contributors:

By (Author) R. Preston McAfee

ISBN:

9780691124032

Publisher:

Princeton University Press

Imprint:

Princeton University Press

Publication Date:

25th October 2005

Country:

United States

Classifications

Readership:

Professional and Scholarly

Fiction/Non-fiction:

Non Fiction

Main Subject:
Dewey:

658.4012

Physical Properties

Physical Format:

Paperback

Number of Pages:

424

Dimensions:

Width 146mm, Height 229mm

Weight:

539g

Description

*One of Strategy & Business's Best Business Books for 2003*

Competitive Solutions is an entertaining and wide ranging introduction to successful business methods applied to a variety of real-world situations. Rejecting the one-size-fits-all premise that underlies so many guides to business strategy, Preston McAfee develops the intellectual tools and insights needed to confront many marketplace problems.

Drawing on his broad experience as a consultant for major U.S. companies, as well as extensive research, McAfee emphasises cooperation, pricing, litigation, and antitrust as vital to a firm's competitive posture and focuses more attention on these elements than do most business strategy accounts. McAfee begins by considering strategy as successfully applied by America OnLine, an example that introduces many of the tools discussed in greater depth throughout the book. From here he moves to industry analysis: By examining the context for developing a strategy, he points out uses of positioning and differentiation that enable a firm to weaken price competition and deter rivals from stealing customers. McAfee's exploration of a product's life cycle proves an invaluable guide to positioning new technology in order to maximise the potential for future customers.

In the centrepiece of the book, McAfee lays out a how-to manual for cooperation, providing tactics crucial for setting standards, lobbying the government, and fostering industry growth. Writing in a conversational manner, McAfee also addresses such deep topics as organisational design and employee compensation and incentives. More detailed discussions examine antitrust enforcement, which is an increasingly important constraint on strategy, as well as strategies for pricing, bidding, signalling, and bargaining.

This book is a fascinating examination of modern business strategy and its application in many different settings. Students of business and economics as well as executives and managers will recognise Competitive Solutions as an indispensable resource as well as a definitive vision of the strategic firm: one in which each element of company strategy reinforces the other elements.

'[T]his book does an excellent job of translating the insights of modern IO into language that business students can readily grasp...I am confident that this is a book that will be received by good students and will serve well as the main text in any strategy course that approaches the topic.'Benjamin E. Hermalin,Journal of Economic Literature

Reviews

One of Strategy & Business's Best Business Books for 2003 "Competitive Solutions: The Strategist's Toolkit belongs on every strategist's bookshelf. McAfee is an economist with a gift for selecting and communicating the best new thinking by economists about business, translating from often abstruse mathematics to clear English and understandable examples. McAfee explains economists' latest thinking about pricing, auctions, signaling, and incentives--key decisions that have make-or-break potential for a company."--Strategy & Business "[T]his book does an excellent job of translating the insights of modern IO into language that business students can readily grasp... I am confident that this is a book that will be received by good students and will serve well as the main text in any strategy course that approaches the topic."--Benjamin E. Hermalin, Journal of Economic Literature

Author Bio

R. Preston McAfee is J. Stanley Johnson Professor of Business, Economics, and Management at the California Institute of Technology. One of North America's leading experts in industrial organization, he is the author of dozens of papers on antitrust, pricing, auctions, and business strategy and coeditor of the "American Economic Review". McAfee codesigned the Federal Communication Commission's PCS auctions, which raised $20 billion, and served as an expert for the Federal Trade Commission on a variety of matters, including the Exxon-Mobil and BP-Arco mergers.

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