Creating Competitive Advantage: How to Be Strategically Ahead in Changing Markets

by Kevin Uphill

The economic environment is global, highly sophisticated and in continuous fast flux. The challenge for business leaders, executives and strategists is to read and respond agilely to trends and underlying movements to stay ahead of dynamic market flow and change. Creating Competitive Advantage sets out a compelling case for the business benefits of better market anticipation, and provides tools and approaches to develop a forward-looking strategy that will deliver these. Through theory, case studies and practical insights, the book demonstrates how better analysis of market trends and scanning of the environment combined with business model change and confident leadership can gain and maintain competitive advantage.

With the right approach, game-changing strategy can be highly accessible for all business strategists and owners, rather than as today, the almost exclusive reserve of a few brave and instinctive entrepreneurs. With tools, assessments and models to get more value out of the business data you already have and take your strategy to the next level through analytically-supported intuition, Creating Competitive Advantage gives business leaders and strategists the toolkit to move from a responsive mindset to a leading one.

Online supporting resources for this book include downloadable figures and tables from the book.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

238 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2016

Reviews

[Louise Foerster · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uphill is smart. He is experienced, strategic, capable, the person you want in the room when you're thrashing through tough issues, impossible decisions, unanticipated market moves. I do not know him, have never met him, but feel fairly confident in assessing his qualifications to write this book.
I am smart. I am likewise experienced, strategic, capable, the person you want on your side in assessing a situation, figuring out what to do next, how to gain competitive advantage. What's more, I have an MBA from a leading business school and have spent decades with leading companies including a stint as management consultant where I worked with dozens of companies in assessing their situation, developing the strategies, tactics, and ways to create competitive advantage. I worked with many clients in assessing, planning their workforce capabilities.
I genuinely looked forward to reading this book. The subject resonates, is critical, and often overlooked.
This book is a perfect example of why there are ghostwriters in this world. The genuine, valuable, piercing insights are buried so profoundly in turgid, mind-numbing prose that it's not worth the effort. The terrific principles that Uphill shares are simple and extraordinarily difficult to do well, but the desire and the doing make a powerful contribution to the organization and enable even greater growth. There are rockstar business book ghostwriters and there are also equally talented, less costly writers eager to craft, to mold and sculpt great ideas into powerful message. Not everyone can write -- nor should everyone try. Writing this book was one of those golden moments to elect the precise talent to fill the need. It's regrettable that the moment was blown.
As I read, I considered how Uphill might have shared his story. In the past, there were numerous business and academic outlets for tight, well-written pieces. Today, unfortunately, what would have made for a dense, memorable, important piece is puffed up into a book, into turgid, moribund, exhaustion-inducing blather.