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Rita Gunther McGrath
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The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business Hardcover – June 4, 2013

by Rita Gunther McGrath (Author), Alex Gourlay (Foreword)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 175 ratings
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Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business?

Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now.

In short, strategy is stuck. Most leaders are using frameworks that were designed for a different era of business and based on a single dominant idea—that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Once the premise on which all strategies were built, this idea is increasingly irrelevant.

Now, Columbia Business School professor and globally recognized strategy expert Rita Gunther McGrath argues that it’s time to go beyond the very concept of sustainable competitive advantage. Instead, organizations need to forge a new path to winning: capturing opportunities fast, exploiting them decisively, and moving on even before they are exhausted. She shows how to do this with a new set of practices based on the notion of transient competitive advantage.

This book serves as a new playbook for strategy, one based on updated assumptions about how the world works, and shows how some of the world’s most successful companies use this method to compete and win today.

Filled with compelling examples from “growth outlier” firms such as Fujifilm, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Infosys, Yahoo! Japan, and Atmos Energy, The End of Competitive Advantage is your guide to renewed success and profitable growth in an economy increasingly defined by transient advantage.
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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harvard Business Review Press
  4. Publication date
    June 4, 2013
  5. Dimensions
    6.4 x 0.9 x 9.4 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9781422172810
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1422172810
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Business leaders should ‘have a good look’ at Rita McGrath's new book about the importance of a flexible and dynamic business model.” — Entrepreneur magazine (entrepreneur.com)

“Unlocking the secrets of competitiveness… In her new book, McGrath debunks the notion of sustainable competitive advantage. It no longer has relevance she says, and instead organizations now need to find ways of leveraging temporary advantages to remain fluid and innovative enough to change tack when those advantages no longer remain.” — Decision

“There are a number of valuable lessons in The End of Competitive Advantage that IT leaders can heed and inculcate. It also stands as a challenge for them to shed old, reactionary ways of doing business, and instead assume strategies that differentiate their organizations as innovative thought centers.” —CIO Digest

“intriguing look at the future” — BizEd magazine

“The End of Competitive Advantage is one of the best business strategy books in recent years. It is readable, well organised and capable of delivering observations that can be absorbed the next strategy meeting. But beyond that it rather importantly updates our assumptions about what will and won't work in that ‘fast moving world.” — Engineering and Technology Magazine

“The End of Competitive Advantage fits beautifully into the ongoing discussion about what defines successful companies today, and what will continue to in the future.” — 800 CEO READ

“The book is well written, well argued, assumes knowledge on the part of the reader without sliding into either corporate speak or the long words of academia, and the argument hard to refute... More importantly, the solutions offered here are immediately actionable.” — Business Traveller (businesstraveller.com)

ADVANCE PRAISE for The End of Competitive Advantage:

Francisco D’Souza, CEO, Cognizant—
“If competitive advantage was ever sustainable, that time has passed. McGrath’s book not only captures the shortcomings of traditional, static models, but lays out the tools that fuel leading performance. The End of Competitive Advantage will give you an entirely new perspective on how to think about strategy.”

William D. Green, former Chairman, Accenture—
“This smart, readable book addresses today’s most significant strategy reality: that we are living in an era of transient advantage. Rita McGrath provides a playbook for this new landscape, showing how you can identify opportunities fast, execute against them at scale, and be unafraid to move on when the situation changes.”

Sanjay Purohit, Senior Vice President, Infosys Ltd.—
“The urge to hold on to one’s established competitive advantage is a vicious trap. McGrath clearly establishes the factors central to building a dynamic competitive edge for an enterprise of tomorrow. Refreshing, insightful, and a must-read.”

Nancy McKinstry, CEO and Chairman, Executive Board, Wolters Kluwer nv—
“McGrath’s groundbreaking work is aptly timed for today’s dynamic markets, where winning requires continuous reconfiguration.”

Klaus C. Kleinfeld, Chairman and CEO, Alcoa—
“The End of Competitive Advantage makes clear that high-performance teams have to stay vigilant. Are your leaders seizing new opportunities or just trying to optimize an outdated strategy? Keep your head up and stay alert, or a transient advantage might pass you by.”

Clayton M. Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School—
“As a long-time member of the Rita McGrath fan club, I was delighted to see this book. Her approach to strategy is fresh and practical and is exactly what managers need today. It acknowledges competitive realities but shows a clear path forward. It is one of the most illuminating takes on how to deal with disruption that I have ever read.”

About the Author

Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School in New York, is one of the world’s leading experts on strategy in highly uncertain and volatile environments. She works with both Global 1000 icons and smaller, fast-growing organizations to help them create an entrepreneurial mind-set, drive growth, and recognize when and how to disengage.

McGrath has coauthored several popular books, including Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity (2009), MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth (2005), and The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty (2000). In 2009 McGrath was inducted as a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society, an honor accorded to those who have had a significant impact on the field.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1422172813
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard Business Review Press (June 4, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781422172810
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1422172810
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.03 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 175 ratings

About the author

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Rita Gunther McGrath

Rita Gunther McGrath
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Rita Gunther McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premiere expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. She was recently named the #1 Management Thinker by Global Gurus.

Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her latest book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sept. 2019). She has written three other books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating one of the most important management ideas ever developed. She is a highly sought-after speaker at exclusive corporate events around the globe, including Association events and management retreats.

She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.

She is married and is proud to be the mother of two delightful grownups.

For more information on Rita visit www.ritamcgrath.com.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
175 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

kevin l mellyn
5.0 out of 5 stars The Innovation Imperative
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2013
Verified Purchase
The great strength of this book is not that it dissects the root causes of why the traditional sources of competitive advantage have eroded in many industries or why the classic Michael Porter model for strategy formulation has outlived its usefulness. It doesn't. Instead,McGrath more or less asserts her premisses without dwelling on them. What it does do in a very well organized and easy to read fashion is provide a useful set of ideas for managing in a world of rapid and discontinuous change."Innovation" is widely viewed as a magic bullet for business and even national growth but few established firms can innovate beyond continuous improvement, if at all. The key challenge is that firms are all about stability and continuity and by their very nature highly political and inward focused bureaucracies where power (and rewards) depend on the control of resources and information. This makes it hard to disengage (a key concept here) from declining opportunities until too late and equally hard to convince key constituencies to take risks that might not pay off. But with some guts it can be done as McGrath illustrates in ten crisp case studies across diverse industries and geographies. Based on experience, not all successful, working with companies facing disruptive change she lays out key principles of what works and what doesn't without minimizing the difficulties. It is a quick read and well worth your attention.
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Sam
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the Read
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2018
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Overall, “The End of Competitive Advantage” is a beneficial read for both managers involved in strategy development for a company and employees who want to keep up with today’s competitive environment. It is a thought-provoking book which looks at how some of the most steadily-successful companies stay ahead of the curve and weather the unforeseeable changes both within and outside their own industries. The book is very well organized and easy to follow. In the final chapter, McGrath even applies the concepts discussed throughout the book related to businesses, to a person’s own career choices.

The book provides some very useful information about business and the new and changing dynamics of the competitive environment. McGrath gives some good advice as to what companies need to have and do to compete in this ever-changing environment. She also suggests specific measures that a company can take to gain the skills or management necessary to become more competitive in this environment. The book explores and supports the idea that competitive advantage is only temporary; there is no such thing as a sustainable competitive advantage.

At times, the book can seem fairly redundant as the idea that “the only thing constant is change” is not necessarily a new concept. While the book does provide some examples, the examples seem to be too shallow and do not give much detail or go into depth. It would be valuable if the book had more examples of the principles being discussed and more in-depth detail and descriptions of how to apply the principles.
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Ian Mann
5.0 out of 5 stars Don't overlook this book!
Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2013
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The End of Competitive Advantage by Rita Gunther McGrath

As a strategist, a writer on strategy, and a teacher of strategy, the opening paragraph of this book resonated with familiarity: “If you dropped into a boardroom discussion or an executive team meeting, chances are you’d hear a lot of strategic thinking based on ideas and frameworks designed in, and for, a different era.”

These frameworks are presumed to be truths, as obvious as gravity on earth.

Topping the list is the imperative to find, retain, and sustain the company’s competitive advantage (Porter.) Following closely behind is the BCG’s growth-share matrix for analysing corporate portfolios, and then Hamel and Prahalad’s “core competencies.”

All share one assumption: The purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. This is a notion formulated in the 1980s! Then there were no mobile phones, let alone cell phones, no internet, your Walkman used audio-cassettes, and you wrote letters to your parents and friends on aerograms.

The author of this valuable and timely book, Rita Gunther McGrath, is a professor at Columbia Business School. Her clients include Pearson, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Alliance Boots, and the World Economic Forum.

The central thesis of the book is that a sustainable competitive advantage is now a debilitating illusion. Strategy must facilitate the quick exploiting of advantages that come and go, and organizations that will succeed are those that have been deliberately designed to achieve this purpose.

“The strategy playbook today needs to be based on the idea of transient competitive advantage,” says Professor McGrath.

The book is a description of the essential components of a company capable to moving rapidly from one advantage to another. Most of what was essential to a company built for sustainable competitive advantage is not merely irrelevant; it is a significant impediment to success.

Small companies are able to turn about quickly and grab at the latest opportunity.

Can a company employing thousands of people, with investments in materials, machinery, and infrastructure, do the same? Intuitively, the answer appears to be not, but the book sites case studies of companies, of considerable heft that have done just that.

When the Hunt brothers managed to corner the silver market in 1979, they sent the price of silver soaring form $2 an ounce to $50 an ounce. Minoru Ohnishi, the CEO of Fuji Photo Film, was deeply troubled by this experience, with the photo industry so heavily dependent on silver. He wanted to be able to produce film without silver so that the company could never be held hostage. He began redesigning Fuji so that it would be able to seize advantages as they arose.

Kodak, the giant of the industry at the time, stuck to their competitive advantage in silver based, celluloid based film.

Today, Fujifilm is a significant player in health care and electronics and earns 45% of its revenue from document solutions and office printers. It grew into an industry giant during the decades when most other Japanese industries were stagnating. Today Fuji ranks 377th on Fortune’s Global 500 list, employs 78,000 people, and generates $ 25b in revenues. Kodak has declared bankruptcy.

McGrath’s research team identified every publicly traded company on any global exchange with a market capitalization of over $ 1b as of the end of 2009 - some 5,000 companies. Only 10 managed to grow net income consistently by more than 5% over a five and ten year period.
These consistent growth companies included Cognizant Technology Solutions (United States); HDFC Bank (India); ACS (Spain); Krka (Slovenia); Infosys (India); Tsingtao Brewery (China); Yahoo! Japan (Japan); and Indra Sistemas (Spain).

All were operating with a new playbook for strategy based on new assumptions for competing. These new assumptions include continuous reconfiguration of the business rather than trying to defend existing competitive advantages. They were designed for “Healthy Disengagement” that is, a design intended, (yes, intended, ) to end advantages frequently, formally and systematically. They focused on building innovation proficiency and used their resource allocation to promote deftness by not allowing departments to control key resources. (Try wrestling resources of cash or skill from a strong department!) They were obsessed by rapid execution.

All these design innovations presuppose a leadership mindset they all possessed: The assumption that existing advantages will come under pressure sooner or later.

In passing, Professor McGrath tells of a somewhat counterintuitive idea shared with her by a friend working for a Brazilian company: “In Brazil,” he said, “we’ve been through it all— inflation, corruption, unpredictable governmental regulation, you name it. And you know, you get good at it.”

Maybe South Africa is not only an exciting place to live and work in, but a unique training ground for businesses into a future without sustainable competitive advantages.

Readability: Light ----+ Serious
Insights: High +---- Low
Practical: High -+--- Low

* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy.
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Fernando Pérez
5.0 out of 5 stars This book is amazing, I used it as a base for my business
Reviewed in Mexico on April 30, 2018
Verified Purchase
Rita has a clear view on how to manage the new transformation era using the concept shared in this book, the only question that I made me is: Why I did not read it before?
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars 説得力があります。
Reviewed in Japan on September 30, 2021
Verified Purchase
内容は非常に説得力があります。シンプルでわかりやすいフレームワーク化されるとインパクトがあると思いました。あとDynamic Capabilitiesとの関連について触れてほしいと思いました。
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Rajat Bose
5.0 out of 5 stars End of Competitive Advantage is a point well made.
Reviewed in India on August 10, 2016
Verified Purchase
It has been a fashion to talk about sustainable competitive advantage and/or durable economic moats but the moot point as this book makes it amply clear that sustainable competitive advantage is a thing of the past. It just doesn't exist anymore the way it did maybe five or three decades back! One must read it to rid oneself off such delusions! End of competitive advantage is a point well made.
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Martin Rothbart
4.0 out of 5 stars Clear messages and good examples
Reviewed in Germany on May 24, 2015
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The book contains clear messages on what to do. Best practice examples are often used. It has slightly more focus on organizational topics than product topics.
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Fengjing Zhang
5.0 out of 5 stars I love it!
Reviewed in Canada on September 17, 2013
Verified Purchase
The book is very good! It's so fast that I can't imagine! And the quality of the book is so good! I like the feeling when I touch the paper book, that's the reason I don't like the electronic books! thank you!
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