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Strategy and Competitive Advantage — Part 3

How businesses choose markets, build a position and make durable strategic decisions.

24 chapters · About 256 minutes · Free to read

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KEVOS / READOSBUSINESSStrategy andCompetitiveAdvantage — Part 3READOS COLLECTION

Contents

  1. 01Making community and sustainability efforts add up: from a list of good deeds to a coherent setSponsorships, donations, recycling and solar can each be worthwhile and still not add up to much. How to anchor them to the few outcomes that matter, give each a reason and stop the rest.
  2. 02Managing opportunities: identify, qualify, satisfy, solidifyA practical four-stage way to manage sales opportunities, from finding the right people to keeping customers long after the first sale, and what each stage asks of you.
  3. 03Mapping dependencies across your projects: complexity lives in the connectionsCounting projects understates complexity. How to map shared people, decisions, systems and timing across your work, find concentration points and reduce coupling with modular design.
  4. 04Monitoring competitors online: free and paid tools, what to watch and a monthly routineHow small businesses can track competitors' websites, search rankings, content, advertising, social media and reviews with simple tools, a monthly routine and ethical limits.
  5. 05Moving premises is more than a move: using a relocation to change how the business worksA move looks like logistics, but a new site can change customers, costs, workflow, staff and reputation. How to decide what deserves to survive the move and judge success after opening day.
  6. 06Network effects and community-led growth: when each customer makes the business more valuableHow network effects and communities help businesses grow: five types of network effect, the cold-start problem, building partner and local networks, and growing through communities.
  7. 07Planning when you cannot predict: plans that detect, load-bearing assumptions and triggersUncertainty is a reason to plan early, not to skip planning. How to write plans that show quickly when you are wrong, find the assumptions that carry the case and set stop triggers.
  8. 08Promoting a specialist into leadership: a career change, not a rewardYour best technician is not automatically your best team leader. Why the move is a change of profession, how to support the transition and why a technical path can be the better answer.
  9. 09Prospecting: know who you are looking for, then fish where they areEffective prospecting starts with a clear picture of your ideal customer and a deliberate choice of where to find them. How to define both, and how to avoid busy work that produces nothing.
  10. 10Pruning what the business offers: which products and services still earn their placeBreadth arrives one sensible yes at a time and leaves only on purpose. How to count what each line really costs in unit cost, customer recall and owner attention, and decide what to keep.
  11. 11Qualifying opportunities: how to tell a real deal from a pleasant conversationQualifying is the discipline of finding out early whether an opportunity is real. The questions that matter, common frameworks such as BANT and MEDDIC, and how to walk away gracefully.
  12. 12Read the constraints, then tailor the method: choosing how to run a job from what binds itSimilar deliverables can hide very different jobs. How to find the constraint that binds, rank conflicts before delegating, and tailor the method without weakening accountability.
  13. 13Reports that change decisions: what to show, how to show it and what gets lost on the way upMany management reports describe activity and change nothing. How to build reports around decisions and forecasts, show links between projects, keep early warnings and put key facts first.
  14. 14Resolving disagreements without stopping the work: choosing the right process and keeping delivery movingMost contract disagreements arise while work is under way. How to match the dispute process to the decision needed, escalate to real authority and keep undisputed work moving.
  15. 15Running a successful retail business: range, value, costs, displays, service, systems and careful expansionPractical retail lessons: plan the range from data, control costs to deliver value, manage space and supply, design displays that sell, serve every customer well and expand carefully.
  16. 16Same goal, different paths: setting targets across sites and teams that are not alikeIdentical targets look fair but waste effort where sites differ. How to keep one goal, let each site pick the action that suits it, compare fairly and test claims of being different.
  17. 17Selling performance, not products: making circular business models payTake-back, remanufacturing and product-as-a-service only work when ownership, incentives and channel economics support them. How to design the commercial side of circularity.
  18. 18Selling prevention: the customers who intend never to have the problemMost businesses see only customers in trouble. Those who want never to be in trouble buy differently and need a different model. How to find them, prove value and test demand.
  19. 19Setting up a project team before the work starts: roles, day jobs and readinessMany project problems are set up before delivery begins. How to build a team from people with day jobs, run a kickoff that settles real questions and check readiness early.
  20. 20Setting up an advisory board for a small business: mandate, members, meetings and termsHow a small business can borrow decades of experience through an advisory board: how it differs from a board of directors, choosing a mandate and members, running meetings and agreeing fair terms.
  21. 21Solving big hassles for a premium: ten kinds of customer pain worth paying to removeThe bigger the hassle you solve, the bigger the premium or market share you earn. Ten kinds of customer pain, from wasted time to costly equipment, with examples and how to find them in your market.
  22. 22Sponsors who can stop the work and owners who must make it pay: getting the right people at the tableA sponsor is the person who can stop a project, not its most senior supporter, and benefits come from those who must change how they work. How to fill both roles and write benefits they own.
  23. 23Starting a food business in Australia: from a local product to a regional brandWhy food suits many founders, how to build a local food brand step by step, and the Australian rules to plan for: registration, food safety, labelling, allergens and origin.
  24. 24Sustainability as an operating choice, not a marketing claimWhy sustainability is only credible when it changes what a business designs, makes, buys, measures and stops doing, with a six-layer framework and guidance on supportable claims.

All chapters preserve the original KEVOS Insights content. These topic-based reading collections are organised alphabetically; chapters may be read in any order.

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