The Financial Times Guide to Strategy: How to Create and Deliver a Winning Strategy, Third Edition

Chapter 5. What skills and capabilities underpin your success?

Competitive positions should not be thought of independently of the skills and capabilities that make them possible. Where you are in leading positions, or gaining share, there must be a reason. Customers like what you have to offer, certainly, but why? Or, if you know that you are more profitable than other competitors, why is this? How can you make good money, and yet also have delighted customers?

When I asked Randy this question, he was pretty dismissive. ‘It’s because we’ve got good products, dummy,’ he told me right off. ‘Or,’ he added after a brief pause, ‘it’s because we can make them cheaper and price them cheaper than anyone else.’

‘Sure,’ I replied, ‘but why is that? How come? ...