The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems

by James F. Moore

James Moore boldly demonstrates that for many vibrant companies, the future is now; that today's great enterprises no longer compete for product superiority or even industry dominance. What matters now, and from now on, is total system leadership. Make no mistake - business rivalries have never been more intense. But the playing field is raised, the speed and stakes multiply geometrically, and the strategic options have never been more diverse.
Grasping the complex, hidden patterns in today's competitive terrain, Moore envisions a future characterized by organized chaos. As the old powers wait and wonder, vast new fortunes flourish where entrepreneurs jostle to integrate technologies and cultivate utterly new markets of unimaginable richness.
Inviting readers to approach their own businesses with equal boldness, Moore introduces biological ecology as a metaphor for strategic thinking about business coevolution and radically new cooperative/competitive relationships.
From his vantage point at the hot centers of global economic competition, Moore provides a topographical map to competitive systems, enabling readers to position their own companies within interlocking business networks, to identify the development stage of their system, and to pursue the strategy most likely to prevail and ultimately dominate the whole.
But a business model for one's own firm is simply not enough. Leaders must build strong communities of shared meaning, yielding a special resiliency, flexibility, and resistance to catastrophe.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Management

297 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1996

Reviews

[Joel]

This read is a must for anyone interested in the origins of business ecosystem theory. While the book is not a (double-blind peer-reviewed) piece of academic literature, it does a great job of clarifying all the inconsistencies in Moore's previous and seminal article in Harvard Business Review. Furthermore, Moore now positions business ecosystems firmly in the field of strategy, with a major focus on answering the 'so what' question.

[Susannah Sutton]

It’s got some useful case studies but it can be a bit bombastic in style, certainly not academic but a good springboard into the concept of the business ecosystem