Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is terrific! Unlike the general business tomes on competitive analysis and principles that may have put you to sleep in the past, this book shows you six ways to make lots of progress against competitors by focusing on times when they are very vulnerable because they are making acquisitions or are being acquired.
The basic premise of the book is that 80 percent of all acquisitions fail to earn their keep (return the money invested in them). The most common reason for this is poor planning of how to integrate the acquisition. In appendix C, you'll find every academic study of the subject from 1950 - 1999 to back up that point.
The six strategies are: (1) Draw away the acquired company's best people; (2) Attack while the merger chaos is at its worst; (3) Use the merger to get your own internal improvements going faster; (4) Use more effective alternatives to acquisitions; (5) Use fast-track, effective methods to integrate your acquisitions (when you make them); and (6) Use combinations of (1-5) as they make sense.
The book has just the right number of recent examples to make each point clear. You will learn more than you probably know now about what Michael Armstrong has been doing at AT&T (in response to MCI and WorldCom coming together), the success of Daimler-Benz with Chrysler, the problems Deutsche Bank had with Bankers Trust, what Airbus has been doing to Boeing, how GE, Cisco Systems, and Ford do a good job of acquisitions, and Dell and Southwest have taken advantage of competitors in mergers.
The book also has an excellent appendix D that explains why companies do so many counterproductive mergers and integrations.
This book is an important contribution to competitive strategy for two primary reasons: (1) Companies are going to do more and larger mergers in response to globalization and concentration trends and (2) being more effective in a merger situation means you get stronger while the competitor gets weaker (you can make 5 years worth of normal competitive progress in a year because the situation is a two-edged sword helping you, while hurting your competitor).
Make this book the first one you read about competitive strategy and tactics. You may not need to read another one! Overcome your misconception stall that all times are equally good for making competitive inroads.
My only caveat is that some of the research that I have participated in shows that you can also do well with acquisitions if you stick to certain kinds, and that virtually no other types of acquisitions ever work. So although this is the best available public information, it's not the final word. Be sure to look at case histories of companies like your competitor and you who have taken similar actions to see what happened before finalizing your strategy: That should solve the problem I am raising.
Live long and prosper because of this book's advice!
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