George Stalk

Argues that the ways leading companies manage time--in production, in new product development, and in sales and distribution--represent the most powerful new sources of competitive advantage ; with detailed examples of companies that have put time-based strategies in place.

How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Markets

Competing Against Time

Thomas M. Hout

Two consultants explain how companies utilize the time element in production, product development, and sales distribution to gain the business edge

How Time-based Competition is Reshaping Global Markets

John Butman

Robert Lachenauer

Hardball takes leaders deep inside the world of hardball competition - a world where the players are zealously committed to winning and relentlessly driven to strengthen their competitive positions, creating a virtuous cycle that puts them far out of competitors' reach. Based on twenty-five years of experience advising and observing a range of companies, Stalk and Lachenauer reveal how hardball competitors achieve decisive victories - without bending the law and without compromising their obligations to customers and stakeholders. These companies often play rough, and they don't apologize for it. Yet they are also extraordinarily adept at the "soft" side of management - rallying talent and building culture through a laserlike focus on the few issues most critical to success. Using detailed and engaging stories from many industries, Hardball outlines seven classic hardball strategies: unleash massive and overwhelming force, exploit anomalies, threaten competitors' profit sanctuaries, take it and make it your own, entice competitors' into retreat, break industry compromises, and hardball M&A. The authors reveal who uses hardball strategies, under what circumstances each strategy is most effective, and how to orchestrate the attack.

Are You Playing to Play Or Playing to Win?

Hardball

Oscar Orringer

This report documents a finite-element analysis procedure for computation of Mode I and Mode II stress intensity factors at a cracked fastener hole in a single row or a double staggered row of fastener holes on a tension panel. The panel is loaded by cosine bearing pressure distributions applied to each fastener hole. Different bearing forces may be specified for each hole, and any hole may be designated as the damaged hole. The physical structure, finite- element model, program flow and options, input/output conventions, execution times, and limitations are discussed. Results of some example analyses are presented.

Fracture Mechanics Analysis of Single and Double Rows of Fastener Holes Loaded in Bearing

Rob Lachenauer

Great companies stumble and fall when they lose it. Highfliers crash when a competitor notices they don't have it. Start-ups shut down if they can't develop it. "It" is a strategy so powerful and an execution-driven mindset so relentless that companies use it to gain more than just competitive advantage--they achieve an industry dominance that is virtually unassailable and that competitors often try to explain away as unfair. In their "hardball manifesto," authors George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer of the leading strategy consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group show how hardball competitors can build or maintain an enviable competitive edge by pursuing one or more of the classic "hardball strategies": unleash massive and overwhelming force, exploit anomalies, devastate profit sanctuaries, raise competitors' costs, and break compromises. Based on 25 years of experience advising and observing a range of companies, the authors argue that hardball competitors can gain extreme competitive advantage--neutralizing, marginalizing, or even destroying competitors--without violating their contracts with customers or employees and without breaking the rules. A clear-eyed paean to the timeless strategies that have driven the world's winning companies, Hardball Strategy redefines and reinterprets the meaning of competition for a new generation of business players. George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer are directors of The Boston Consulting Group. Stalk is the author of Competing Against Time, the classic work on time-based competition.

Jonathan Passmore

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