The Ultimate Competitive Advantage

Since 1977, Mitchell and Coles have assisted hundreds of major companies to develop competitive advantages. In 1992, they launched a landmark tracking study of company and CEO best practices in achieving sustained top performance. Their many articles based on this information in Chief Executive Magazine and Directors & Boards since 1992 have already established a higher standard for CEOs and their companies.

With The Ultimate Competitive Advantage, they’ve drawn on their proprietary experiences with and knowledge of top-performing small to large companies and nonprofits to raise CEO and company standards again. They show how all organizations can continually reinvent themselves to build increasing competitive advantages while improving growth and profitability. In doing so, they cite previously secret lessons from top-performing business leaders to guide you. The book is filled with detailed new knowledge, questions and management processes combining the most successful companies’ latest methods.

• Foreword by B. Thomas Golisano
• Foreword by Robert B. Knutson
• Introduction: Build Market Leadership and Prosperity
• Prologue: Profiles in Business Model Innovation
• Part 1: The Most Productive Areas for Business Model Innovation
1. Increase Value Without Raising Prices and Costs
2. Adjust Prices to Increase Sales Profitably
3. Eliminate Costs That Reduce Customer and End-User Benefits
• Part 2: Provide Sustained Benefits for All Stakeholders
4. Further Improve Your Business Model and Build a Buffer for Lean Times
5. Share Benefits Fairly with All Who Create Them
• Part 3: Expand Business Model Innovation
6. Start Business Model Innovation Ahead of Competitors and Stay Focused
7. Enhance Your Organization's Ongoing Business Model Innovation Capability
• Part 4: Pursue Higher-Potential Business Model Improvement
8. Focus on the Areas of Highest Potential Growth and Profitability.
9. Expand the Benefits You Provide and Share
• Epilogue: Greater and Longer Lasting Benefits.

Well, it is not bad, but you can't say that it is any good either. It sprouts a lot of words and concepts (most of which are well-known to any MBA), but still manages to miss a lot of stuff that most practitioners would find valuable.

The case studies (more like funny stories) are questionable at best, and you are hard-pressed to see them supporting the narrative.

There are better books out there, invest in them instead.