"Scenarios are now a part of every successful manager’s toolkit. This book is the first comprehensive guide to the latest developments in scenario thinking written by today’s leading practitioners in the field." —Napier Collyns, a pioneer of scenario planning at Dutch/Shell now Managing Director, Gloal Business Network (GBN) "In twenty years of helping companies create and plan for their futures, I have never come across a book that dealt with the use of scenario-based planning as comprehensively as this one." —David Kelley CEO, IDEO Product Development the creators of the Apple Mouse "This book is the greatest reference today on scenario planning—the preeminent tool for those who believe that the future belongs to those with the imagination to create it. The combination of scenario planning and strategy formulation can be a wondrous right brain process that galvanizes teams with a compelling vision and common purpose." —David E. Schnedler Director, Corporate Planning Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Organizations must create intellectual and organizational tension around distinctly different views of the future. Learning from the Future demonstrates why scenarios are ideally suited to generate such tension and how to use scenario learning as a steppingstone to superior strategies." —Richard Pascale, Associate Fellow of Oxford University and author of Managing on the Edge: How the Smartest Companies Use Conflict to Stay Ahead "An invaluable guide to the mind-stretching benefits of scenarios that are fully embedded in the strategic thinking process. It should be required reading for any management team embarking on scenario development so they can realize the benefits and evade the pitfalls." —George Day, Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor and Director of the Huntsman Center for Global Competition and Innovation Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Does your business, like many of today's leading companies, make these dangerous competitive mistakes?

Take actions as if competitors did not exist

• Collect extensive competitor data but fail to convert it into insights about competitors' current and potential actions
• Fail to project competitors' likely strategies and moves
• Ask the wrong questions about the strategies and actions of current and emerging competitors
• Conduct competitor analysis separately from strategic thinking

To prepare your business for market rivalry in the twenty-first century you need an approach to competitor analysis and intelligence that far surpasses the best practices in most organizations today. You need Competitors.

In Competitors, international strategy guru Liam Fahey provides a new integrated, comprehensive method for analyzing the competition. Called competitor learning, the method is the product of Fahey's 15 years of consulting, researching, and teaching competitor analysis in cutting-edge companies in the United States and Europe. It combines a system for identifying critical competitor data with a series of analytical frameworks to help you develop powerful strategic insights.

Competitors shows you how to:

• Determine exactly what you need to know about competitors
• Describe and analyze competitors' marketplace strategy, alliances and networks, assumptions, assets, capabilities, and culture
• Project competitors' likely strategic moves and outcomes
• Draw critical inferences from limited data about competitors' goals, mindsets, and behaviors
• Use competitor analysis to anticipate changes in customers, channels, suppliers, competitive dynamics, and emerging markets
• Gain valuable insights into how and why your organization might win or lose as it competes against current or potential rivals
• Avoid typical errors associated with traditional competitor analysis

Competitors is an indispensable learning tool for managers who want to get ahead of the competition—both today and for the future. It teaches managers how to know their competition as thoroughly as they know their own organization, and how to use that knowledge to outwit, outmaneuver, and outperform rivals.

Praise for Competitors

"The best hope for a company is to be the first to read this book before its competitors do." —Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing, J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University

"Liam Fahey has written the first richly textured, application-friendly and realistic book on what is often misnamed competitive intelligence . . . a masterful achievement by a power in competitive understanding." —Larry Prusak, Managing Principal, IBM Consulting Group and coauthor of Working Knowledge

"Fahey's Competitors is a lively, dynamic, major break from traditional 'static' strategic analyses. He provides a unique, pragmatic, entrepreneurial approach for seeing where competitors are going in the future—and how to preempt, reconceive or reshape the 'competitive domain' faster and better." —James Brian Quinn, author of Intelligent Enterprise and Innovation Explosion

"We have embraced Liam Fahey's competitor learning framework as the guiding methodology for understanding the current and emerging competition. Competitors is required reading for taking competitive analysis to the next level." —Benjamin R. Fisher, Jr., Director, Corporate Marketplace, PPG Industries, Inc.

"If I could have my way, this book would remain within the hands of a select few. . . armed with these tools, companies can be positioned to outwit, outmaneuver, and outperform their competitors." —Faye Brill, Director, Business Intelligence, Meritor Automotive, Inc. and former president, Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals

Over 525,000 Copies of the Portable MBA Series Sold

Learn the best new ideas in BUSINESS STRATEGY from the brightest lights in the field

This Second Edition of the phenomenally successful Portable MBA in Strategy brings you the latest developments in strategic thought, analysis, and implementation from an all-star team of teachers, authors, and consultants. Harvard’s Michael E. Porter shows you how to enhance competitive advantage through a global strategy. C. K. Prahalad explains how to create and leverage core competencies–a strategy that has led many organizations to overwhelming success. Jeffrey Sampler of the London Business School demonstrates how the Internet and the rapidly evolving e-business economy challenge many of our fundamental ideas about strategy.

H. Kurt Christensen and Anil Gupta map strategy alternatives for the corporate organization and its business units. Irene Duhaime demonstrates the relevance of strategy for small businesses. And John F. Mahon, Barbara Bigelow, and Liam Fahey explore political strategy–the need to manage relationships with the concerned segments of the public, trade associations, governmental agencies, community groups, and other stakeholders.

You’ll find penetrating insights about strategy-making from David Collis of Yale, George Day of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Ellen Hart of Gemini Consulting, and many others. To take advantage of the newest, most innovative, most effective ideas in business strategy from minds that thrive on the cutting edge, start reading The Portable MBA in Strategy, Second Edition today.