Books
Winning the Right Game
One of our most important strategic thinkers for the twenty-first century.
How to compete in a world of ecosystems: strategies and tools for offense, defense, timing, and leadership in a changing competitive landscape.
The basis of competition is changing. Are you prepared? Rivalry is shifting from well-defined industries to broader ecosystems: automobiles to mobility platforms; banking to fintech; television broadcasting to video streaming. Your competitors are coming from new directions and pursuing different goals from those of your familiar rivals. In this world, succeeding with the old rules can mean losing the new game. Winning the Right Game introduces the concepts, tools, and frameworks necessary to confront the threat of ecosystem disruption and to develop the strategies that will let your organization play ecosystem offense.
To succeed in this world, you need to change your perspective on competition, growth, and leadership. In this book, strategy expert Ron Adner offers a new way of thinking, illustrating breakthrough ideas with compelling cases. How did a strategy of ecosystem defense save Wayfair and Spotify from being crushed by giants Amazon and Apple? How did Oprah Winfrey redraw industry boundaries to transition from television host to multimedia mogul? How did a shift to an alignment mindset enable Microsoft’s cloud-based revival? Each was rooted in a new approach to competitors, partners, and timing that you can apply to your own organization. For today’s leaders the difference between success and failure is no longer simply winning, but rather being sure that you are winning the right game.
Reviews
Ron Adner teaches with clarity and conviction that, in a world beset by roiling waves of turbulent disruption, the next big winners will be those who craft a deeply resilient strategic architecture. While many strategists focus on the firm and its industry, Adner urgently pushes us to zoom out, to see—and ultimately to harness—the larger map of connections and interdependencies in an entire ecosystem. Rigorous and relevant, thoughtful and practical, Adner is proving himself to be one of our most important strategic thinkers for the twenty-first century.
—JIM COLLINS, author of Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall, coauthor of Built to Last and Great by Choice.
Winning the Right Game is a landmark contribution to the strategy literature. Any leader who does not understand their value architecture risks being blindsided by ecosystem disruption. Essential reading for anyone involved in setting strategy—or who wants to be.
—REBECCA HENDERSON, John and Natty McArthur University Professor, Harvard University; author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire.
Once again, Ron Adner has written a book that changes how you think about value creation and competitive outlook. This book is a powerful tool for executives leading transformations under uncertainty. I found myself reading it again and again for inspiration.
—QUE DALLARA, President & CEO, Honeywell Connected Enterprise.
In times of radical change, the ability to reinvent organizations from a position of strength is key to staying relevant. Winning the Right Game offers a brilliant strategic framework to lead the transformation of entire value chains through an ecosystem approach.
—JIM HAGEMANN SNABE, Chairman, Siemens and A. P. Moller Maersk.
After living through a major industry transformation at Kodak, I know that the challenges of disruption cannot be met by just doing what you’ve historically done well even better. Ron Adner’s book provides critical insight into how to determine what the emerging competitive environment will likely hold and how to prosper in it.
—STEVE SASSON, Kodak (retired), inventor of the digital camera.