Reflections on Competitive Advantage 10

Competitive advantage is about how companies use their strengths and set aside their weaknesses. In the book, Porter proposes an effective and unique analytical tool ———value chain". He believes that the basic tool for diagnosing competitive advantage and seeking to improve the competitiveness of enterprises is the value chain, which divides the various activities of enterprise operations into the following types - product design and development, production management, marketing means and delivery.

The core competitiveness of an enterprise is the overall management ability of the management team of the enterprise, which is a kind of human ability, and the product is competitive and the marketing is competitive. Such a value chain can help enterprises to effectively manage and compete, and how to use such a value chain is particularly important.

Competitive strategy execution becomes a competitive advantage. From competitive strategy to the principle of competitive advantage, intra-industry competition, enterprise strategy and competitive advantage, and finally to talk about offensive and defensive competitive advantages, it is actually the enterprise strategic management theory with structure-behavior-performance as the main content, and follows the structure of industrial structure-industrial comparison-entry barrier-behavior after the barrier to expound the whole theory. Porter has always believed that industrial structure and industrial positioning are the two most important aspects of an enterprise, and the whole book also revolves around these two key points.

Grasp this point, and it will be relatively easy to read. Porter's research on competitive advantage has evolved from the enterprise and industrial level to the national level, and from participating in domestic competition to participating in international competition. At this time, the theory of competitive advantage challenges the traditional concept of international superiority caused by comparative advantage

Which is the real driver of comparative advantage or competitive advantage? Therefore, it is necessary to theoretically sort out the relationship between the theory of comparative advantage and the emerging theory of competitive advantage, which represents the mainstream of international theory, which has important theoretical significance for clarifying the future development direction of international theory. Most of the chapters are not very detailed, and I just want to get a glimpse of economic theory through this book.

The most fascinating part of the book is the analysis of the competitors, at least for me. When we talk about competitors, we often think about how to kill them, but Porter believes that there are good and bad competitors, and good competitors can help you achieve many strategic goals, increase your lasting competitive advantage, and improve the industrial structure you are in. The book even lists 15 characteristics of a good competitor for your reference.

I think it's also important to try to be a good competitor to your opponents, and the key is to play by the rules of the game, to be communicable and gentle on purpose. Other areas I'm interested in are: cost composition and cost drivers, differentiation strategy implementation, and defense strategy.

Although this is a pure economics book, I can't help but compare it with my daily life while reading it, and I still feel a lot of things outside of economics, which is really beneficial!