Competitive Strategy – Business Decisions that Strengthened Companies, No Matter the Industry

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I’m launching a new, recurring series called: Competitive Strategy – Spotlight on Decisions that Strengthened Companies, No Matter the Industry. Why am I doing this? Frankly, I am tired of hearing “this is a good business” or “this is a bad business” with some blanket statements behind why. How many times have you heard why a certain company is a “good business”?

Consolidated industry
Leading national market share
Asset light
High margins
Stable demand
Of course, saying a business has a “moat” doesn’t hurt

A company that has some of these features isn’t necessarily great. If you want to learn why (or disagree and would like to hear differing thoughts) stay tuned. I am actually launching the first in the series today – and what better way than to start with a company like Amazon.

A company’s competitive strategy outlines what decisions it will follow every day.

Where it will compete, what segments of the market it will target, where it will choose to scale, how it will use its balance sheet, and what will customers value?

These decisions can result the metrics I mentioned above, but the metrics themselves do not make the business good, or differentiated.

I will go through the competitive strategy of a wide array of companies. Decisions companies have made / are making to show how those decisions upgraded them from good to great.

I hope to surprise some folks by discussing names that are in “bad” or cyclical industries. Sometimes you can have a bad industry, but a great company within that industry – and sometimes the stars align for a great investment opportunity.

After writing a few of these, knowledge will build and I probably will refer back to previous posts for examples on different company tactics (e.g. hard to not say Amazon Prime is similar to the Costco Membership strategy)

Here is a preliminary timeline of companies and industries I will examine (subject to change). If there are any companies you’d like for me to add, reach out to me in the comments or on twitter and I’ll add it to the queue. Some names may jump to the top if there is enough demand.

Here’s the one’s published so far: