What's Your Competitive Advantage?

Chapter 14

Synergy strategies and scope choices

The competitive strategies we have explored thus far (specialisation, adaptive, low cost, innovation, excellence, no-frills, and targeting) operate at the level of the single business. This could be a ‘stand-alone’ small- or medium-sized enterprise, or it could be a strategic business unit (SBU) that is part of a larger corporate structure. The most straightforward circumstance is where the firm makes one product and sells it into one geographic market. Although single-product firms are not unusual, most firms of any size tend to have a portfolio of products, and they look to serve several markets. In this chapter we look at what strategy means in the multi-business context. How can a corporation ...