Perspectives on Strategy from the Boston Consulting Group

"Strategic success usually depends upon the culture, perceptions, attitudes, and characteristic behavior of competitors and their mutual awareness of each other."

"Classical theories have been used to develop public policy that is unrealistic."

""Cost of value added declines approximately 20 to 30 percent each time accumulated experience is doubled.""

"There is no justification for increased scale unless there is growth."

"Costs net of inflation do continually decline as a function of experience."

"The profit equation has three variables?price, volume, and cost. "

"Any competitor with less than one-quarter the share of the largest competitor cannot be an effective competitor."

"Companies that compete effectively on time tend to be good at other things as well: for instance, the consistency of their product quality . . . or generate new ideas and incorporate them in innovation."

"Cross-docking enables Wal-Mart to achieve the economies that come with purchasing full truckloads of goods while avoiding the usual inventory and handling costs."

"To make cross-docking work, Wal-Mart has had to make strategic investments in a variety of interlocking support systems far beyond what could be justified by conventional ROI criteria."

"The essence of strategy is not the structure of a company's products and markets but the dynamics of its behavior."

"The building blocks of corporate strategy are not products and markets but business processes."

"Capabilities-based competitors are integrating vertically to ensure that they, not a supplier or distributor, control the performance of key business processes."

"Such a company is a "capability predator"?able to come out of nowhere and move rapidly from nonparticipant to major players and even to industry leader. "

"As more and more companies make the transition to capabilities-based competition, the simple fact of competing on capabilities will become less important than the specific capabilities a company has chosen to build."

"Action for its own sake can quickly become perilous."