Competitive Advantage Quotes
Top 20 Competitive Advantage Quotes
No 1 (Best quote!)
Discover your difference...and make the most of it,
- Howard Gardner, pictured right, in Extraordinary
Minds,1997.
No 2
In a competitive industry, the key to competitive advantage is product differentiation.
- Philip Kotler, pictured right above, in Marketing Management
ninth edition, 1997
So Tom Peters (1942- ), management writer, pictured right,
says:
If you’re not distinct, you’re extinct.
Gary Hamel ,pictured right, and
CK Prahalad, pictured right below, similarly say in
Competing for the
Future (1996):
A company surrenders tomorrow’s businesses when it gets better without getting different.
No 3
Always to be best, and to be distinguished above the rest.
- Homer (800-701 BC), Greek poet, pictured right.
No 4
In our business there are the quick and the dead.
- Andrew Grove (1936- ) , pictured right,
American boss of Intel 1987-98
So Alvin Toffler , pictured right.says in Future Shock (1970)
Today change is so swift... that yesterday’s truths suddenly become today’s fictions.
No 5
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive
advantage.
- Jack Welch, American boss of
General Electric 1981-2001, pictured right.
Welch also believes that competitive advantage requires facing reality, summed up by the Danish philosopher,
pictured right, Soren
Kierkegaard (1813-55) as:
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
No 6
Corporate success derives from a competitive advantage which is based on distinctive capabilities
- John Kay, pictured right, Foundations of Corporate
Success (1993)
In the same book Kay says that these distinctive capabilities (that
Hamel and Prahalad call core competencies) are
based on relationships with key stakeholders:
Competitive advantage...is most often derived from the unique character of a firm’s relationships with its
suppliers, customers, or employees
No 7
Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.
- Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in the film Wall Street (1987), pictured right.
No 8
Somewhere in the elusive concept of corporate character – culture, if you will – lies a main source of
sustainable competitive advantage.
- Rob Goffee (pictured right above) and
Gareth Jones (pictured right) in The Character of a
Corporation (1998)
No 9
Satisfied customers and motivated employees are the key to competitive success,
- Percy Barnevik, boss of the Swedish engineering company, ABB, 1988-96, pictured right.
Two management thinkers agree:
People and how we manage them are becoming more important because many other sources of competitive success are
less powerful than they once were.
- Jeffrey Pfeffer, pictured right, in Competitive Advantage
Through People (1994),
It is only people who can sustain the competitive advantage of a company.
-Lynda Gratton, pictured right, in Living Strategy (2000)
No 10
Reengineering is the fundamental re-thinking and radical re-design of business processes to achieve dramatic
improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed
- Michael Hammer, pictured right. and
James Champy, pictured right below, in
Reengineering the Corporation (1993)
No 11
Competitive advantage grows fundamentally out of value a firm is able to create for its buyers that exceeds the
firm’s cost of creating it.
- Michael Porter, pictured right, in Competitive Advantage (1985)
Porter also said in the Competitive Advantage of Nations
(1990):
Companies achieve competitive advantage through acts of innovation. They approach innovation in its broadest
sense, including new technologies and new ways of doing things.
Gary Hamel (1954- ), pictured right,
American management writer, says similarly:
Radical innovation is the competitive advantage for the new millennium,
No 12
Information and knowledge are the thermonuclear competitive weapons of our time.
- Thomas Stewart , pictured right, in Intellectual
Capital (1997)
No 13
If you don’t have competitive advantage, don’t compete,
- Jack Welch, American boss of
General Electric (1981-2001), pictured right.
No 14
To remain static is to lose ground.
- David
Packard (1912-96), co- founder of Hewlett-Packard, pictured right.
No 15
There are no gains without pains.
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-65) American politician, pictured right.
The African American civil rights campaigner Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) , pictured
right.puts it this way:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
No 16
Change before you have to.
- Jack Welch (1935- ),
American boss of General Electric 1981-2001, pictured right.
No 17
A truly great company willingly abandons practices that have long worked well in the hope and expectation of
coming up with something better.
- Michael Hammer (pictured right above)
and James Champy (pictured right)
Reengineering the Corporation (1993)
No 18
In the struggle for survival, the fittest win at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting
themselves to their environment.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
English naturalist, pictured right.
No 19
There can be no progress if people have no faith in tomorrow.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-63), pictured right,
American president.
No 20
A clever fighter is one who not only wins but excels in winning with ease.
- Sun Tzu (c. 544-c.496 BC), Chinese general,
pictured right.
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