Varios

Companies must be flexible to respond rapidly to competitive and market changes. They must benchmark continuously to achieve best practice. They must outsource aggressively to gain efficiencies. And they must nurture a few core competencies in the race to stay ahead of rivals.
The root of the problem is the failure to distinguish between operational effectiveness and strategy. The quest forproductivity, quality, and speed has spawned a remarkable number of management tools and techniques: total quality management, benchmarking, time-based competition, outsourcing, and partnering, reengineering, change management. Almost imperceptibly, management tools have taken the place of strategy.
Operational effectiveness and strategy are essential, but they work in very different ways.Operational effectiveness (OE), means performing similar activities better than rivals perform them. Includes but is not limited to efficiently. Strategic positioning means performing different activities from rivals’ or performing similar activities in different ways.
Constant improvement in operational effectiveness is necessary to achieve superior profitability. However, it is not usually sufficient.Few companies have competed successfully in the basis of operational effectiveness over an extended period, and staying ahead of rivals gets harder every day. The most obvious reason for that is the rapid diffusion of best practices.
The second reason that improved operational effectiveness is insufficient, the more benchmarking companies do, the more, they look alike.
Strategy Rest on UniqueActivities
Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.
The essence of strategy is choosing to perform activities differently that rivals do.
The original of strategic position emerge from three distinct sources. First, positioning can be based on producing a subset of an industry’s product orservices. Variety-based positioning makes economic sense when a company can best produce particular products or services using distinctive sets of activities.
A second basis of positioning is that serving most of all the needs particular group of customers’ needs-based positioning groups of costumers with different needs, and when a tailored set of activities can serve those need best.
A variant ofneeds-based positioning when the same customer has different needs on different occasions or for different types of transactions.

The third basis of positioning is that of segmenting customers who are accessible in different ways. Although their needs are similar to those of other customers, the best configuration of activities to reach them is different. Access- based positioning.
Strategy is thecreation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities. The essence of strategic positioning is to choose activities that are from rivals’.
A Sustainable Strategic Position Requires Trade-offs
A trade-off means that more of one thing necessitates less of another. Create the need for choice and protect against repositioners and straddlers. Also arise for threereasons. The first is inconsistencies in imagine or reputation. Second, trade – offs arise from activities themselves. Different positions, different product configurations, different equipment, different employee behavior. Positioning trade- offs are pervasive in competition and essential to strategy. They create the need for choice and purposefully limit what a company offers. In general, falsetrade-offs between cost and quality occurs primarily when there is redundant or wasted effort, poor control or accuracy, or weak coordination. Strategy is making trade-off in competing. The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
Fit Drives Both Competitive Advantage and Sustainability
Fit is important because discrete activities often affect one another. There are three types of fit.
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