Discovering Fresh Approaches to Business Rivalry
Hey, imagine you're chatting with a buddy over coffee, and I tell you about this fascinating read that flips traditional business thinking on its head. It's called "Winning the Right Game: How to Disrupt, Defend, and Deliver in a Changing World" by Ron Adner. The original mind behind it is Ron Adner himself, with Huang Tingmin handling the translation, and it's put out by Global Views Monthly.
title: [Book Sharing] Ecosystem Competition Strategy - Redefining Value Structure, Identifying the Right Game in Transformation, Mastering Strategic Tools, and Winning the Initiative (Book Excerpt)
published: false
date: 2022-12-30 00:00:00 UTC
tags:
canonical_url: http://www.evanlin.com/reading-Winning-the-Right-Game/
---
[](https://moo.im/a/exCKOZ "Ecosystem Competition Strategy")
Let me share why this book hits hard: in times of massive shifts across sectors, stumbling in the outdated arena can knock you out quicker than any direct showdown. Jim Collins, the brains behind "Built to Last," calls Adner one of the top strategic minds this century has seen. And it's fresh from the folks at "MIT Sloan Management Review"—definitely a heavy hitter.
Take the story of Kodak back in 2012—they filed for bankruptcy, going from a powerhouse in global photography to a textbook example of botched evolution in the digital age. But hold on, was it really just about ignoring digital tech? Nope, the real killer was overlooking how the entire network of players and processes got totally upended!
These days, every organization grapples with crumbling old structures and the need to rebuild interconnected systems. That's the core battleground.
As boundaries between fields blur, making it tough to spot who's on your team versus who's lurking as a future foe, figuring out the smart way to engage becomes crucial.
Ron Adner teaches strategy at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business—that elite Ivy League spot—and he's dived deep into areas like company breakthroughs. With a stack of awards under his belt, he's known globally as a guru on navigating business networks. In his latest book, he unpacks how these modern setups for generating worth stand apart from old-school models. He moves beyond just looking at supply lines, resource pools, or internal strengths, and instead lays out fresh mindsets vital for thriving amid networked rivalries.
#### Book Purchase Recommendation Website:
- [Readmoo Online Book Purchase](https://moo.im/a/exCKOZ)
# Preface:
This is the twenty-fourth book I've read this year. I originally received a physical copy of this book. However, because I was traveling abroad, I couldn't get the physical book to read. I'm also someone who likes to read e-books, so I bought the e-book version. And most of the chapters were read through the e-book's narration, which was really an interesting book.
I would also like to explain in advance that this book has a very large vision. It clearly explains the process of ecosystem transformation, the establishment of ecosystems, and even how to defend and win. However, readers who are practitioners may not completely agree with some of the methodologies inside. But the examples given inside really supplemented me with a lot of things I didn't understand.
# Thoughts
This book breaks down the entire ecosystem competition strategy as if it were a textbook, clearly explaining the composition of the ecosystem, the elements that make up the ecosystem, and the ways in which the ecosystem grows, as well as how to win in the ecosystem. There are many examples given inside, which have given me a new understanding of many things:
- [Kodak](https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E4%BC%8A%E5%A3%AB%E6%9B%BC%E6%9F%AF%E8%BE%BE%E5%85%AC%E5%8F%B8)'s wrong market strategy.
- [Lexmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark)'s proactive transformation strategy.
- Spotify, TomTom, and Wayfair related strategies.
The above two are related to changes in the ecosystem, but what should you do when a strong competitor comes along? The author also provides relevant cases to share. In the second half, the author promotes Microsoft's Nadella as an example and a case of transformation. Because Nadella organized an external ecosystem and integrated resources internally. (This is also the most difficult.)
Many times, many organizations advocate "passion," but passion is not a guiding principle. Trust and understanding the company's strategy is a sentence that everyone follows, and it is also a way to combine changes and transformations within the internal ecosystem.
(Thoughts to be continued)
# Introduction:
Oh, and here's a quirky fact from the BBC: Among the priciest fluids worldwide in 2018, black printer ink came in eighth place—trailing behind stuff like scorpion toxin, insulin, and even Chanel No. 5 perfume.
## Chapter 1: Losing the Wrong Game is Equivalent to Failure
Companies are constantly driving new industry transformations due to the invention of new products. But Kodak, which invented the digital camera patent in 1975, later went bankrupt. In the news, we often assume that they were eliminated by digital cameras because the company was old and didn't follow the transformation. But the real story is often not like that. Kodak's failure was not in missing the opportunity, but because they lost the wrong game.
Kodak started building the digital imaging field in 1980, and by acquiring ofoto.com (an online photo album website), they made their "digital printing" field even bigger. In 2005, Kodak still had the first-place sales of digital cameras in the United States. They also knew that film was already a sunset market, and they also started to see printing consumables, and built their own ecosystem through the printing of digital photos.