How We Compete

Download or read book How We Compete written by Suzanne Berger and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2005-12-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Impressive... This is an evidence-based bottom-up account of the realities of globalisation. It is more varied, more subtle, and more substantial than many of the popular works available on the subject." -- Financial Times Based on a five-year study by the MIT Industrial Performance Center, How We Compete goes into the trenches of over 500 international companies to discover which practices are succeeding in today’s global economy, which are failing –and why. There is a rising fear in America that no job is safe. In industry after industry, jobs seem to be moving to low-wage countries in Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe. Production once handled entirely in U.S. factories is now broken into pieces and farmed out to locations around the world. To discover whether our current fears about globalization are justified, Suzanne Berger and a group of MIT researchers went to the front lines, visiting workplaces and factories around the world. They conducted interviews with managers at more than 500 companies, asking questions about which parts of the manufacturing process are carried out in their own plants and which are outsourced, who their biggest competitors are, and how they plan to grow their businesses. How We Compete presents their fascinating, and often surprising, conclusions. Berger and her team examined businesses where technology changes rapidly–such as electronics and software–as well as more traditional sectors, like the automobile industry, clothing, and textile industries. They compared the strategies and success of high-tech companies like Intel and Sony, who manufacture their products in their own plants, and Cisco and Dell, who rely primarily on outsourcing. They looked closely at textile and clothing to uncover why some companies, including the Gap and Liz Claiborne, choose to outsource production to foreign countries, while others, such as Zara and Benetton, base most operations at home. What emerged was far more complicated than the black-and-white picture presented by promoters and opponents of globalization. Contrary to popular belief, cheap labor is not the answer, and the world is not flat, as Thomas Friedman would have it. How We Compete shows that there are many different ways to win in the global economy, and that the avenues open to American companies are much wider than we ever imagined. SUZANNE BERGER is the Raphael Dorman and Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science at MIT and director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative. She was a member of the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity, whose report Made in America analyzed weaknesses and strengths in U.S. industry in the 1980s. She lives in Boston , Massachusetts.

Download or read book Fit to Compete written by Michael Beer and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Silence Killing Your Strategy? In his thirty years of working in corporations, Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer has witnessed firsthand how organizational silence derails strategic objectives. When employees can't speak truth to power, senior leaders don't hear what they need to hear about their company's fitness to compete, and employees lose trust in those leaders and become less committed to change. In Fit to Compete, Beer presents an antidote to silence--principles and a time-tested innovative process for holding honest conversations with everyone in your organization. Used by over eight hundred organizations across the globe, the strategic fitness process has helped leaders in a diverse range of industries--including medical technology, information technology, banking, restaurant chains, and pharmaceuticals--hear the raw but necessary truth about the sources of misalignment between their strategies and their organizations. In addition to step-by-step instructions, Beer offers detailed and illustrative case studies of companies that have conducted honest conversations to great effect. He also shows how to apply the process more broadly to a variety of strategic challenges and at multiple levels throughout the organization. Practical, enlightening, and comprehensive, Fit to Compete is the book you should turn to if you to want create winning strategies that your entire company will rally behind.

Download or read book Compete, Play, Win written by David Apostolico and published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told from the viewpoint of a self-described competition junkie, Compete, Play, Win is a look at the psychology behind the competitive drive, a look at the sociological ramifications of acting on competitive impulses, and a book of advice on how to channel those impulses for personal gain in business, sport, and in life. In a chapter called?Sperm Wars,? author David Apostolico pinpoints conception as the beginning of our competitive nature, and discusses the competition for a mate that precedes that, setting up the idea that competition is a biological necessity, and evolution has embraced and modified that drive. In a later chapter called?Competitive Nation,? Apostolico uses himself as a test subject, entering a far-flung variety of contests (including competitive eating contests, dog shows, and drag races), in order to test how far he, as a competitive junkie, is willing to go for victory. At the end of each event, he answers a list of ten questions, concluding with,?Can a competitive junkie ever feel truly satisfied?? Along this personal journey, Apostolico draws parallels between personal competition and competition in the business world, and imparts his firsthand knowledge of how to use the competitive drive to win at everything you do.

Download or read book No Contest written by Alfie Kohn and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1992 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that competition is inherently destructive and that competitive behavior is culturally induced, counter-productive, and causes anxiety, selfishness, self-doubt, and poor communication.

Download or read book Friend & Foe written by Adam Galinsky and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it take to succeed? This question has fueled a long-running debate. Some have argued that humans are fundamentally competitive, and that pursuing self-interest is the best way to get ahead. Others claim that humans are born to cooperate and that we are most successful when we collaborate with others. In FRIEND AND FOE, researchers Galinsky and Schweitzer explain why this debate misses the mark. Rather than being hardwired to compete or cooperate, we have evolved to do both. In every relationship, from co-workers to friends to spouses to siblings we are both friends and foes. It is only by learning how to strike the right balance between these two forces that we can improve our long-term relationships and get more of what we want. Here, Galinsky and Schweitzer draw on original, cutting edge research from their own labs and from across the social sciences as well as vivid real-world examples to show how to maximize success in work and in life by deftly navigating the tension between cooperation and competition. They offer insights and advice ranging from: how to gain power and keep it, how to build trust and repair trust once it’s broken, how to diffuse workplace conflict and bias, how to find the right comparisons to motivate us and make us happier, and how to succeed in negotiations – ensuring that we achieve our own goals and satisfy those of our counterparts. Along the way, they pose and offer surprising answers to a number of perplexing puzzles: when does too much talent undermine success; why can acting less competently gain you status and authority, where do many gender differences in the workplace really come from, how can you use deception to build trust, and why do you want to go last on American Idol and in many interview situations, but make the first offer when negotiating the sale of a new car. We perform at our very best when we hold cooperation and competition in the right balance. This book is a guide for navigating our social and professional worlds by learning when to cooperate as a friend and when to compete as a foe—and how to be better at both.

Download or read book Competitive Strategy written by Michael E. Porter and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 1998 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pathbreaking book, Michael E. Porter unravels the rules that govern competition and turns them into powerful analytical tools to help management interpret market signals and forecast the direction of industry development.

Download or read book How Countries Compete written by Richard H. K. Vietor and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Vietor shows how governments set direction and create the climate for a nation's economic development and profitable private enterprise. Drawing on history, economic analysis, and interviews with executives and officials around the globe, he provides examinations of different government approaches to growth and development.