Book = Fresh Look at Business Success

A review of:

The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Secrets of Continually Developing a More Profitable Business Model by Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles

Some wag, a few years ago, audaciously claimed that there really was no such thing as a "business model." It is probably true that many businesses aren't so much the realization of a carefully designed model as they are the products of happenstance, survival-driven evolution, and habit. And it's probably also true that many top executives cannot articulate the model upon which their business is based. But, of course, every business is most definitely based upon a model (intentionally crafted or not).

Authors Mitchell and Coles both define what a business model is, and declare that continually tinkering with your business's model gives you the Ultimate Competitive Advantage (which is, in their words, "products and services [that] can be provided in ways that deliver more sales, higher profitability and greater cash flow than would occur if a competitor supplied the same customer"). They proclaim that the "big idea" of their book "is that business model obsolescence is *the* major unperceived opportunity for and threat to all businesses now."

Innovation, the authors argue, belongs not only in the R&D lab but in every facet of your operation. This constant reinvention, the authors argue, truly is a matter of survival: Businesses too easily get trapped by their own traditions inhibiting growth or responsiveness to changing conditions, or they fail to distinguish themselves from equally capable and awfully similar purveyors of goods and services.

Drawing on research spanning more than a decade, the authors tracked companies that performed above their competitors for at least three years under the same CEO. Interviews with CEOs provide many of the "secrets" offered by the book. The topics span pricing, corporate values, financial management, rewards for various stockholders, innovation, and many of the multiple facets that go into creating a distinct and successful business model.

In addition to providing examples from traditional corporations, Mitchell and Coles also draw insights from philosophers, point to a few examples from the not-for-profit world (e.g., Habitat for Humanity), and provide case studies of individual innovators (such as chronicling an enterprising golf caddy, tracing the exemplary evolution of Peter Drucker as a thought leader and consultant, and reviewing the career of the avant garde architect Frank Lloyd Wright). In presenting their concepts, the authors also employ devices and metaphors such as the familiar child's lemonade stand, an orchard, and a (thoroughly tortured) lily pond.

This book doesn't fall prey to the all too common ploy of promising "three easy steps to instant success," but neither does it present a linear, prescribed methodology for a reader who is eager to implement The Ultimate Competitive Advantage.

Yet the book is still process-oriented. There are plenty of insights and relevant inferences waiting to be drawn, and there is considerable practical information available to someone willing to meander through the many diverse examples and case studies while picking up the gems along that path.

My advice is to read this as an executive thought-starter: flipping, skimming and pouncing. That is, flip through the book while skimming each page. There are many helpful subheadings, salient thoughts from the text --- conveniently bolded and boxed, and especially stimulating and useful questions at the end of each chapter.

The content warrants the five-star rating, though I'm less enthusiastic about the structure. (E.g., there are more than 70 pages of preamble and stage-setting with two guest Forewords, a Preface, an Introduction, AND a Prologue all preceding the nuts and bolts. Whew!) But you'll get your time and money's worth from this research-based look at a new way to see what your business is really all about --- especially if you are a CEO, general manager, or a unit or division head (or aspire to be one).

My advice: spend time with this book. Grab it now and then as a source of stimulation for revisiting your own assumptions about your business. Using the many varied and detailed examples, rethink your truths and view them through the lens of the scores of innovative companies and inspiring individuals profiled throughout this unconventional book.

Buy the book here.

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Don Blohowiak, a management consultant and popular conference speaker, is the author of several business books. The executive director of the Lead Well® Institute in Princeton, NJ, he may be reached at http://www.LeadWell.com/.

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