Competitive Strategy: A Contemporary Retake

Competitive Strategy is a key driver of industrial growth and economic development. Professor Michael Porter’s treatise, formulated in 1980, remains the only integrated work on the subject to date. While its core concepts endure, it requires the holistic incorporation of additional insights and prescriptions, based on current and future trends.

This book reviews Porter’s work in the context of the global economic forces and rapid technological changes that have affected businesses and their strategies from the mid-2000s. It focuses on select aspects of competitive strategy particularly affected by such forces and develops several novel constructs to strengthen and expand the core analytical framework of competitive strategy with a futuristic perspective. The book embeds the impact of technology throughout but recognises that a more focused and detailed analysis of the same has been presented in the author’s recent companion work, Technology and Competitive Strategy: Perspectives for Innovators, Differentiators and Followers.

Each of the book’s chapters is dedicated to a unique facet of competitive strategy, with novel hypotheses and constructs supported by multiple real-life examples. The book will inspire professionals, business leaders, academicians and public policy makers involved in strategy and growth to appreciate issues and solutions in a broader and a more contemporaneous industrial and economic context.

Dr C Bhaktavatsala Rao holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Management and an M.Tech. in Industrial Engineering, both from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati.

Dr C B Rao has over forty-two years of diversified experience in strategic and operational leadership of large, reputed companies, including global MNCs, in India. He has led these companies on paths of rapid growth and value creation. A business leader with deep roots in pharmaceutical and automobile industries and a strong grasp over all functional domains, he has undertaken several growth-driving and value-building integration and diversification initiatives for these companies. He is a prolific writer with over 130 publications in economic and business dailies and refereed journals to his credit. His management blog, Strategy Musings at cbrao2008.blogspot.com, features regular articles on different aspects of strategy and leadership.

Leadercrest Academy was established by Dr Rao, to leverage his knowledge and experience in collaboration with other experts, as a world-class institution for leadership development, competitive strategy and corporate governance that would enable business and industrial excellence. Leadercrest is committed to publishing books and reading materials to support its objectives.

Dr C B Rao recently authored two books, From Start-up to Ramp-up: Indian Insights and Global Context and Technology and Competitive Strategy: Perspectives for Innovators, Differentiators and Followers, which have received critical acclaim. Both books were published under the Leadercrest banner with Notion Press.