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What you're describing here is the notion of activity systems! Michael Porter describes the concept in detail in the article "What is Strategy," Harvard Busines
by mjfern 16y ago
What you're describing here is the notion of activity systems! Michael Porter describes the concept in detail in the article "What is Strategy," Harvard Business Review. The crux of the idea is that the strategic position of a product hinges on a system of activities across a range of areas, from marketing, to product development, to distribution. Activity systems are a source of sustainable competitive advantage because a competitor can imitate one or two activities, but often not the entire system. In other words, a competitor (e.g., RIM) can imitate Apple's hardware or its software, but this is not sufficient. To really compete with Apple, a competitor would need to imitate (and supersede) Apple on a number of fronts: hardware, software, marketing/branding, distribution, logistics, etc. Needless to say, this is quite a challenge!
One of the most stark examples is Southwest Airlines. Scheduled passenger air transportation is a highly transparent industry due to the heavy regulation by the U.S. DOT and the FAA. Despite the fact that competitors know the precise activities that Southwest Airline's performs, they have been generally unable to imitate and compete. And there have been a number of attempts by both legacy and start-up carriers.
- danilocampos 16y agoOutstanding. I'm fascinated by this and off to Google away. Are there any other specific resources or articles you can link to that you think are an especially good discussion of activity systems? Meanwhile, for others, here's a PDF of the document in question: http://www.ipocongress.ru/download/guide/article/what_is_strategy.pdf http://www.ipocongress.ru/download/guide/article/what_is_str...
- mjfern 16y agoIn addition to the "What is Strategy" article, there are several related (academic) journal articles. These articles are quite dense, but interesting nevertheless: Evolution toward fit - http://www.management.wharton.upenn.edu/siggelkow/pdfs/Vanguard%20ASQ.pdf http://www.management.wharton.upenn.edu/siggelkow/pdfs/Vangu... Change in the presence of fit: The rise, the fall, and the renaissance of Liz Claiborne - http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/872.pdf http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/872.pdf
- mjfern 16y agoI'm excited about the number of upvotes for this post about "activity systems." There are a number of excellent concepts/tools in strategy that could help founders assess and develop their start-ups. Anyone have any thoughts on how to best convey these concepts/tools to generate interest and understanding (e.g., book, blog, app, etc.)?
- gbhn 16y agoThanks for posting it. I think a blog on this would be interesting to the HN audience.
- elai 16y agoKind of the inverse of the how a disaster happens: A bunch of failsafes cascading into a disaster. 5 things have to go wrong at once in order for something to go really bad.