Hypercompetitive Rivalries - Paperback

by Richard A. D'Aveni (Author), Robert Gunther (With), Kathryn Rudie Harrigan (Foreword by)

In this pathbreaking book, Richard D'Aveni shows how competitive moves and countermoves escalate with such ferocity today that the traditional sources of competitive advantage can no longer be sustained. D'Aveni argues that a company must fundamentally shift its strategic focus. He constructs a compre-hensive model that shows how firms move up "escalation ladders" as advantage is continually created, eroded, destroyed, and recreated through strategic maneuvering in "four arenas" of competition. Using detailed examples from hypercompetitive industries such as computers, automobiles, and pharmaceuticals, D'Aveni demon-strates how hypercompetitive firms succeed by disrupting the status quo and creating a continuous series of temporary advantages.
With its emphasis on real-world experiences of corporate warfare, this abridged paperback edition of D'Aveni's masterwork will be essential reading for scholars and managers alike - a perfect introduction to the battlefield of hypercompetitive rivalries.

Back Jacket

This text is written for students coming into the workforce at a most unpredictable and challenging time. The existing competitive turmoil is undermining all the recipes for success that business schools have previously given them. Here is a text that goes beyond nuance in suggesting the dark waters ahead. Drawing upon the guerrilla warfare metaphor, which values strategic flexibility and unorthodox tactics over traditional assumptions concerning competition, Richard D'Aveni offers a compass to M. B. A. students soon to enter rapidly changing industries.

Author Biography

Richard A. D'Aveni teaches business strategy at the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College and consults for several Fortune 500 corporations. He received the A.T. Kearney Award for his research on why big companies fail, and has been profiled as one of the next generation's promising new management thinkers by Wirtschafts-Woche, Germany's equivalent to Business Week.