The Death Of Competition: Leadership And Strategy In The Age Of Business Ecosystems

The Death Of Competition: Leadership And Strategy In The Age Of Business Ecosystems
by James F. Moore

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Amazon.com
Total system leadership, according to business strategy consultant James F. Moore, has replaced mere product superiority and even complete industry dominance as today's corporate brass ring. In The Death of Competition: Leadership & Strategy In the Age of Business Ecosystems, he uses "biological ecology" as a metaphor for the new type of cooperative/competitive relationships that he believes lead to that brass ring -- while guiding readers toward the unique interlocking networks that he says are necessary to attain it.

From Library Journal
The president of GeoPartners Research, Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts, management consulting firm specializing in business strategy and implementation, Moore was impressed and influenced by anthropologist Gregory Bateson during his doctoral study at Harvard and here continues Bateson's thoughts on coevolution, culture, and competition. Moore believes that thinking in terms of traditional industries is no longer acceptable business strategy. He forecasts the death of competition as it is now known and predicts a future of organized chaos. Using the "ecosystem" as a metaphor, he encourages business and business leadership to coevolve into whatever patterns or relationships are needed at particular times to succeed. His business ecosystem is divided into four stages, which he illustrates with corporate examples and ultimately relates to personal ecosystems. His well-developed work deserves the attention of public and academic libraries and executives in all types of business.
Littleton M. Maxwell, Business Information Ctr., Univ. of Richmond, Va.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher
A new vision of competitive systems.

In a groundbreaking new book, James F. Moore, one of the world's foremost experts on leadership and strategy, dispenses with simplistic models of corporate competition to argue that the complex, interdependent nature of today's business relationships is best understood as a form of ecosystem. He examines the profound strategic and managerial implications of this dynamic vision in The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems.

Moore offers a sweeping new understanding of how businesses interact, cooperate, and compete; his ecosystem analogy more closely reflects the actual experiences of today's companies. He names four distinct stages in the growth of a business ecosystem,"The Terrain of Opportunities," "The Revolution Spreads," "The Red Queen Effect," and "Renewal or Death," and shows how businesses can meet the changing demands and goals of each. He not only offers a powerful metaphor for understanding the new business environment, he also shows how to apply this understanding to flourish and succeed in a climate of organized chaos.

Moore vividly illustrates his thesis not only with examples from the natural world, but also with case studies of actual companies. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary examples, from the complex alliances among IBM, Intel, and Microsoft to the territorial tactics employed by Wal-Mart against Kmart, to the coevolution of Ford and Chrysler, Moore shows how new strategies and visionary leadership are required in these new business ecosystems.

Product Description
Moore's insightful and iconoclastic analysis of the contemporary business climate suggests a new strategic model for the interaction of companies. He conclusively demonstrates that our traditional understanding of competition is no longer adequate to the realities of the business environment, and that an ecosystem understanding of business interactions has profound implications for corporate strategy. The Death Of Competition will change the way people think about competition and cooperation.

About the Author:

In the new paperback edition of his groundbreaking book, James F. Moore, one of the world's foremost experts on leadership and strategy, dispenses with simplistic models of corporate competition to argue that the complex, interdependent nature of today's business relationships is best understood as a form of ecosystem. He examines the profound strategic and managerial implications of this dynamic vision in The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems (HarperBusiness; May 21, 1997).

Moore offers a sweeping new understanding of how businesses interact, cooperate, and compete; his ecosystem analogy more closely reflects the actual experiences of today's companies. He names four distinct stages in the growth of a business ecosystem-"The Terrain of Opportunities," "The Revolution Spreads," "The Red Queen Effect," and "Renewal or Death"-and shows how businesses can meet the changing demands and goals of each. He not only offers a powerful metaphor for understanding the new business environment, he also shows how to apply this understanding to flourish and succeed in a climate of organized chaos.

Moore's insightful and iconoclastic analysis of the contemporary business climate suggests a new strategic model for the interaction of companies. He conclusively demonstrates that our traditional understanding of competition is no longer adequate to the realities of the business environment, and that an ecosystem understanding of business interactions has profound implications for corporate strategy. The Death of Competition will change the way people think about competition and cooperation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James F. Moore is chairman of GeoPartners Research Inc., a strategy consulting and investment firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He advises senior management of a number of the largest worldwide firms. His Harvard Business Review article, "Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition," won the prestigious McKinsey Award for best article of 1993. He is a regular columnist for Upside, the Silicon Valley high-tech executive monthly. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Inside Flap Copy
Competition as we know it is dead. Business managers who don’t face this reality place their businesses at serious risk. In this major work on business strategy, James Moore boldly demonstrates that for many vibrant companies, the future is now; today’s great enterprises no longer compete for product superiority or even industry dominance. What matters now, and from now on, is total system leadership. Make no mistake — business rivalries have never been more intense. But the playing field is raised, the speed and stake multiply geometrically, and the strategic options have never been more diverse. Beyond the death of competition lies the advent of something new and better. But what is it? Grasping the complex, hidden patterns in today’s competitive terrain, James Moore envisions a future characterized by organized chaos. As the old powers wait and wonder, vast new fortunes flourish where entrepreneurs jostle to integrate technologies and cultivate utterly new markets of unimaginable richness. Inviting readers to approach their own businesses with equal boldness, James Moore introduces biological ecology as a metaphor for strategic thinking about business co-evolution and radically new co-operative/competitive relationships. Consider the striking case of IBM, Microsoft, and Intel: in some markets, deadly antagonists; in others, suppliers of vital importance to one another; in still others, contestants in separate games on entirely unrelated fields. From heavy manufacturing to health care and media, huge interconnected webs extend across product, market, and even industry boundaries to define the nature of success for every business. In The Death of Competition, James Moore provides a topographical map to competitive systems, enabling readers to position their own companies within interlocking business networks, to identify the development stage of their system, and to pursue the strategy most likely to prevail and ultimately dominate the whole.

Back Cover Copy
Advance Praise for The Death of Competition "The Death of Competition certainly captures the essence of the change [that] we’re experiencing in the new internet ecosystem. Very prescient." —James L. Barksdale, president and CEO, Netscape "Moore catches the fundamental shift in business thinking—and behavior—today: the economy is not a mechanism, businesses are not machines. They are coevolving, unpredictable organisms within a constantly shifting business eco-system that no one controls.… Managers of companies both great and small must figure out how to coevolve in this changing environment—to compete with what the competition is becoming, not with what it is now." —Esther Dyson, president, Dyson-EDventure Holdings, Inc. "Unique, trustworthy counsel for leaders facing the new economy of empowered customers, global markets, and revolutionary technologies." —Robert E. Allen, CEO, AT&T. "The ecosystems approach and the biological analyses are very useful and very rich. [Moore’s] personal style gives me a sense of sharing and presence. This is not a textbook. It is an experience." —Bo Ekman, chairman and CEO, SIFO Management Group AB "The business world moving toward the twenty-first century needs a new language to construct its new reality.… [Moore’s] bold use of a biological metaphor … will help many businesspeople to start acting from a much deeper understanding of their own New World." —Arie P. DeGeus. (retired) head of Strategic Planning & Scenario Development, Royal Dutch Shell "Moore has reframed the leading-edge concepts of strategy and created an original, dynamic approach to thinking about enterprise, value creation, and the future. His images are powerful in both classroom and boardroom, inspiring students and policy makers alike to see new patterns and possibilities." —John Rosenblum. Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration Darden Graduate School of Business University of Virginia

About the Author
James F. Moore is one of the world's foremost advisors on leadership and strategy. His clients have included AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Royal Dutch Shell, ABB Asea Brown Boveri, and other distinguished companies. His Harvard Business Review article, "Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition," won the prestigious McKinsey Award for best article of 1993.

Currently a visiting member of the faculty at the University of Virginia Darden Graduate School of Business, he is educated in both strategy and psychology. He earned his doctorate from Harvard in Human Development and conducted research on strategy, organizations, and technology at Stanford and Harvard Business Schools.

Excerpted from The Death of Competition : Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems by James F. Moore. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Why Businesses Fail

Circling the big island of Hawaii in a small plane affords one of the most spectacular visual experiences imaginable. An isolated outcropping in the sea more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent, Hawaii has as its center Mauna Kea, a magnificent extinct volcano that rises nearly 14,000 feet. Occasionally, its tip is sprinkled with snow. Closer to sea level, along the southeastern shore, glowing red, active volcanoes smolder. These boiling kettles periodically spew lava into the ocean, adding some small contributions to the landmass and generating immense steam clouds. Amid this varied terrain are dozens of distinct and glorious ecosystems, composed of communities of species, and ranging from alpine deserts to teeming rain forests.

For most people, Hawaii brings to mind images of towering hotels and pearl divers, not to mention pineapples and papaya. For me, Hawaii offers a picture of how some communities of businesses behave and evolve.

For most of its thirty-million-year history, Hawaii was a marvelously self-contained biological world. Plants and animals arrived by wind or wave, but few established themselves. The best scientific estimates are that a successful plant immigration occurred only once every 20,000 to 30,000 years. These few colonists gave rise to a wide diversity of new species. From some 270 colonizing flowering plants, more than 1,000 were created. From a few hundred insect settlers, around 10,000 came into being. From no more than 15 bird species, more than 70 developed.1

Evolving in protected isolation, Hawaii's flora and fauna are reminiscent of traditional industries: heavily protected by tariffs and regulations, old guard owners, and other well-entrenched interests. Inefficient technologies and business processes abound, similar to the unique life-forms that inhabit the Hawaiian islands.

Unlike Hawaii, however, traditional industries are not scenes of verdant splendor. More often, they exhibit intractable class divisions and crusty resistance to anything that threatens the established order. Yet the pattern of their establishment and the dynamics of their demise are strikingly similar.

Hawaii's prolonged period of ecological equilibrium was snapped by the arrival of Polynesian voyagers more than 1,500 years ago. These settlers brought pigs, dogs, and a variety of new plants. Western influence commenced with James Cook's landing in 1778. Subsequent voyages introduced ants, wasps, cats, rats, mosquitoes, and an immense array of plants. These invaders wrought havoc in paradise. More than 40 percent of the indigenous Hawaiian bird species have become extinct since human settlement began. More recently, golf courses and housing developments have radically transformed many local ecosystems.2

In much the same way, new technologies, business processes, and organizational life-forms invade all traditional businesses. They are borne on the winds of global capital flows and managerial migrations. They cross bridges of deregulation. They are encouraged by government policies that foster economic development. A vast tangle of skills and processes is being rendered obsolete.

As a management theorist of sorts, I realize the need and the benefits of these changes. But I also acknowledge the hurt and confusion that innumerable individuals feel as their businesses and livelihoods come under intense pressure. For many people, economic and technological progress constitutes the destruction of their Hawaiian paradise.

The Death of Competition

Shift now from beaches to traffic, from sand to carpet, from bright Hawaiian shirts to gray wool suits. Every day in my work, I observe companies that are drastically affected by the changing ecology of business competition and that seek ways to understand and shape the transformations engulfing them. I tell them about the death of competition.

Not that competition is vanishing. In fact it is intensifying. But competition as most of us have routinely thought of it is dead--and any business manager who doesn't recognize this is threatened. Let me explain. The traditional way to think about competition is in terms of offers and markets. Your product or service goes up against that of your competitor, and one wins. You improve your product by listening to customers, and by investing in the processes that create it.

The problem with this point of view is that it ignores the context--the environment--within which the business lies, and it ignores the need for coevolution with others in that environment, a process that involves cooperation as well as conflict. Even excellent businesses can be destroyed by the conditions around them. They are like species in Hawaii. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves facing extinction because the ecosystem they call home is itself imploding. A good restaurant in a failing neighborhood is likely to die. A first-rate supplier to a collapsing retail chain--a Bradlees, Caldor, or Kmart--had better watch out.

Sometimes the ecosystem as a whole is more or less robust, but the particular niche a business occupies is challenged by newly arriving species. The problem becomes that there are so many similar businesses in a market that none can make a reasonable profit. Airlines, steel companies, long-distance telephone companies, and deregulated electric utilities all face this dilemma. Their contributions have become commodities traded mainly on price. One of the most significant side effects of electronic airline reservation systems has been to enable customers to do comparative shopping. This newly efficient market has been a major factor in driving down prices and margins.

The continued expansion of electronic shopping and the Internet will bring commodity like trading into markets ranging from groceries to automobiles. While such intense price competition is good for consumers in the short run, the threat of razor-thin margins makes it difficult for companies to justify investing in next generation offers--and can stifle innovation.

Neither of these types of business problems--the collapse of the economic fabric around your business or the invasion of your territory by too many similar contributors--is recognized by the conventional view of competition. In my consulting practice, I have seen instance after instance of well-meaning, thoughtful, hardworking people whose businesses were wrecked by these effects. This despite having good products and services, produced by well-run processes.

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