Notes – Competition Demystified: Chapter 4 (#competitiveadvantage, $AAPL)

Reading notes to Competition Demystified, by Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn

Putting it all together (so far)

All business analyses should begin with a study of competitive advantage by exploring the following, in order:

  1. identify the competitive landscape; which markets? who are the competitors?
  2. test for existence of competitive advantages; stable market shares? exceptional profits for extended periods of time?
  3. identify the likely nature of competitive advantages; supply, demand, economies of scale, regulatory hurdles?

Carrying out the analysis

Start by identifying the market segments that make up the industry as a whole and make a list of the leading competitors in each one, by market share. This is an organizational tool to study the breadth and depth of a competitive market place where the target firm’s role can be placed within.

Then, look for signs of existing competitive advantages by observing the stability of incumbent market shares and the profitability of firms within the market segments.

The more movement in and out, the more turbulent the ranking of the companies that remain, and the longer the list of competitors, the less likely it is that there are barriers and competitive advantages.


if you can’t count the top firms in an industry on the fingers of one hand, the chances are good that there are no barriers to entry.


if over a five- to eight-year period, the average absolute [market] share change exceeds 5 percentage points, there are no barriers to entry; if the share change is 2 percentage points or less, the barriers are formidable.

Profitability across an industry is best measured by the use of return on equity (ROE) or return on invested capital (ROIC). As a broad rule of thumb:

After-tax returns on invested capital averaging more than 15 to 25 percent — which would equate to 23 to 38 percent pretax return with tax rates of 35percent — over a decade or more are clear evidence of the presence of competitive advantages. A return on capital in the range of 6-8 percent after tax generally indicates their absence.

Utilize the principle of Occam’s Razor in your industry analysis, keeping things simple until there is a clear need to make them more complex.

Questions from the reading

  1. In the case study in the book, Apple (AAPL) seemed to have spread itself thin by trying to compete in multiple computer industry market segments where it had no clear competitive advantage. Eventually, Apple abandoned manufacturing its own chips and adopted the industry-standard hardware while focusing its efforts on smaller niche markets that had no clear incumbent (including new market segments it created, such as the tablet computer market). Was this the brilliant strategic move responsible for Apple’s current success, or was it something else entirely? Does Apple actually have a clear, sustainable competitive advantage?
  2. A lot of Greenwaldian strategic analysis seems dependent on the observation of historical trends in profitability and market share to arrive at conclusions about the existence of competitive advantage. Is there a way to predict and identify competitive advantage in a new or immature industry without the benefit of historical hindsight?