Richard D’Aveni

Commoditization – a particularly virulent form of hypercompetition – is destroying markets, disrupting industries, and shuttering long-successful firms. In this important presentation Richard D’Aveni provides a radical new framework for fighting back. Drawing on an in-depth study of 30-plus industries, he recommends first identifying the commoditization trap you’re facing. He describes three:

• Deterioration: Low-end firms enter with low-cost/low-benefit offerings that attract the mass market – as Zara did to high-end fashion companies.
• Proliferation: Companies develop new combinations of price paired with several unique benefits that attack part of an incumbents’ market – as Japanese motorcycle makers did to Harley-Davidson.
• Escalation: Players offer more benefits for the same or lower price, squeezing everyone’s margins – as the iPhone did in mobile devices.

D’Aveni provides you with the tools for diagnosing your competitive position and shows how to improve it while also increasing your pricing power – by destroying the commoditization trap confronting you, escaping it, or even turning it to your advantage.

Richard D’Aveni reveals how competitive moves and countermoves escalate with such ferocity today that the traditional sources of competitive advantage can no longer be sustained. To compete in this turbulent environment, D’Aveni argues that a company must fundamentally shift its strategic focus. He shows how firms move up “escalation ladders” as advantage is continually created, eroded, destroyed, and recreated through strategic maneuvering in four arenas of competition. D’Aveni explains how competitors engage in a struggle for control by seeking leadership in the arenas of “price and quality,” “timing and know-how,” “stronghold creation/invasion,” and “deep pockets.” Winners set the pace in each of these four competitive battlegrounds.

Are upstart competitors taking deadly aim at your company’s products and markets? Richard A. D’Aveni presents counter-revolutionary strategies and tactics that any industry leader or established company can use to defend itself against revolutionaries, disrupters, or hypercompetitors. The secret lies in making the rules, not breaking them, D’Aveni says, because rule makers still rule. D’Aveni demonstrates how global powerhouses such as Disney, Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble have achieved preeminence by reconceptualizing their product portfolios as powerful competitive arsenals he calls “spheres of influence.” Essentially a new way to compete by restructuring portfolios around a core geographic/product market, spheres enable any company to influence the behavior and positioning of rivals.