Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't

by Jim Champy

Overview

“Champy’s engaging prose, fascinating success stories, penetrating reflections, and provocative challenges to the status quo capture your full attention from the first page to the last and leave your mind swirling with new thoughts about how to exploit opportunities in a very different world.”
– Ray Stata, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Analog Devices, Inc.

 

“To outsmart or be outsmarted, that is the question in modern business. Jim Champy has found the answer, in fact many answers, by looking inside amazingly successful companies. And he tells their simple stories in this book that is so delightfully short it can be read on one flight.”

– Dr. Robert “Bob” Metcalfe, General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners

 

“In this remarkably readable and incisive book, Jim Champy provides case studies of fast growing, innovative companies that have created and implemented successful strategies that are practical, market tested, and reproducible in today’s global marketplace.”

– Denis A. Bovin, Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Bear Stearns & Co., Inc.

 

“This book shows how to spot opportunities in a world that looks, at times,
like everything is done. Jim has strung together nine pearls that reveal the essence of entrepreneurship.”
– Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, Founder and Chairman, Sycamore Networks, Inc.

 

Author of ReEngineering the Corporation
A New York Times Best Seller & More than 3 Million Copies Sold

 

Jim Champy revolutionized business with Reengineering the Corporation. Now, in Outsmart! he’s doing it again. This concise, fast-paced book shows how you can achieve breakthrough growth by consistently outsmarting your competition. Champy reveals the surprising, counterintuitive lessons learned by companies that have achieved super-high growth for at least three straight years. Drawing on the strategies of some of today’s best “high velocity” companies, he identifies eight powerful ways to compete in even the roughest marketplace. You’ll discover how to find distinctive market positions and sustainable advantages in products, services, delivery methods, and unexpected customers with unexpected needs.

 

How to reignite growth by…

•   Seeing what others don’t

•   Breaking free of mental legacies

•   Using all you know

•   Changing your frame of reference

•   Tapping others’ successes

•   Creating order out of chaos

•   Simplifying complexity

•   Doing everything yourself

 

there is not much new in management.

but there is a lot new in business.

 

Want more? Check out the e-book collection, Jim Champy on What's Really Working in Business.  This brand new collection contains state-of-the-art business insights from world-renowned expert Jim Champy…now in a convenient e-format, at a great price!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780132699006
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	02/26/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jim Champy is one of the leading management and business thinkers of our time. His first best seller, Reengineering the Corporation, remains the bible for executing process change. His second book, Reengineering Management, another best seller, was recognized by Business Week as one of the most important books of its time. But Champy is also an experienced manager and advisor. He is the Chairman of Consulting for Perot Systems. He speaks and writes with the authority of real business experience and brings pragmatism to the world of business. In this new series of books, Champy looks at what’s working today for high-growth businesses. Champy observes that there is not much new in management, but there is a lot new in business–and a lot to learn from what’s new.

Read an Excerpt

Praise Quotes for Outsmart!Praise Quotes for Outsmart!

"Champy's engaging prose, fascinating success stories, penetrating reflections, and provocative challenges to the status quo capture your full attention from the first page to the last and leave your mind swirling with new thoughts about how to exploit opportunities in a very different world."

— Ray Stata, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Analog Devices, Inc.

"To outsmart or be outsmarted, that is the question in modern business. Jim Champy has found the answer, in fact many answers, by looking inside amazingly successful companies. And he tells their simple stories in this book that is so delightfully short it can be read on one flight."

— Dr. Robert "Bob" Metcalfe, General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners

"In this remarkably readable and incisive book, Jim Champy provides case studies of fast growing, innovative companies that have created and implemented successful strategies that are practical, market tested, and reproducible in today's global marketplace."

— Denis A. Bovin, Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Bear Stearns & Co., Inc.

"This book shows how to spot opportunities in a world that looks, at times, like everything is done. Jim has strung together nine pearls that reveal the essence of entrepreneurship."

— Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande, Founder and Chairman, Sycamore Networks, Inc.

Preface

In my more than 30 years of work as a consultant and author, I've learned that the best ideas are found inside companies. But it wasn't always so. There was a time when I strayed from the realm of hands-on pragmatism to search the writings of philosophers for ideas that could be applied to business. To be honest, I thought that quoting the ancients made me sound smarter.

One day, while waxing philosophic during a speech in Monterey, Mexico, I encountered a far smarter gentleman of a certain age sitting in the front row. He interrupted me to ask how the philosophy of Mexico's nineteenth-century ruler, Gen. Antonio Santa Anna, could be applied to management. What could a man both admired and reviled contribute to business? The answer, which my interlocutor duly shared with all present, was a gem of pragmatism. Santa Anna, he told us, firmly believed that whatever worked was the right thing to do.

I have taken his lesson to heart, and this book describes the very real and practical strategies that are working for today's most successful businesses, strategies that I believe will sustain their success into the future. Because the primary goal of all good strategy is growth, the companies analyzed in these pages are among the world's fastest-growing enterprises.

But equally important, their revenue-producing ideas are neither hypothetical nor based on esoteric technologies. They don't require hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars or the vast sums from stock offerings to implement. Rather, they are strategies that any business leader can easily and immediately understand.

This is the first in a planned series comprising four compact volumes on the key topics of strategy, marketing, leadership, and operations. Taken together, the books aim to deliver the most current intelligence available on how to succeed in today's brave new world of business. An ambitious objective? Yes. But what I see a host of companies accomplishing today has me both excited and encouraged.

My ability to write about these matters does not derive from scholarly pursuits, although I've braved assorted academic challenges. Necessity drove me to learn by doing. It is a path that I recommend to anyone who seeks a powerful curriculum and an unforgettable teacher.

In my younger years, I assumed that I would join my family's construction business in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a mill city north of Boston. My quest for relevant knowledge sent me to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where I studied engineering, then to Boston College where I studied law. Finally, I returned to Lawrence for my early training in business.

In my family's company, there were no strategies, business plans, or budgets. We did what seemed right—day by day. We hired people, bought equipment—even acquired real estate—that seemed good for the business. Risk taking was a natural act. We had no spreadsheets, and the most advanced form of technology was a mechanical calculator. But the business worked—most of the time.

In Lawrence, I also had my first taste of a multicultural world. We had stone masons from Italy, carpenters from Quebec, and painters from Ireland. I learned a lot from these folks—something about teams, but more about how, when left alone, good people will do the right thing. I carried this and other lessons into my life in business.

Thanks to my MIT roommate, Tom Gerrity, I was later treated to an advanced course in commerce when he invited two MIT friends and me to join him in a business venture. In 1969, we launched Index Systems, an information-technology start-up based on Tom's Ph.D. research into automating management decision making. We each invested $370, the bet of a lifetime. Because our work was on the cutting edge of technology and business change, we serendipitously became an acquisition target for a bigger company nearly two decades later. In 1988, Computer Science Corporation (CSC) bought our firm and turned it into CSC's management-consulting arm. I became CSC Index's CEO and chairman after the Wharton School of Business lured away our hottest property, Tom, to become the school's dean. I was left to expand CSC Index into what became a $240 million company.

Out of those Index years came the ideas—developed with Michael Hammer and other colleagues—that formed my first book, Reengineering the Corporation, which argued that companies need to change radically and be managed from a process perspective. It became the best-selling business book of the 1990s. I followed this with a second book, Reengineering Management, in which I contended that leaders had to change their own ways of thinking before they could change their organizations. And in a third book, X-Engineering the Corporation, I made the case that process change must extend outside company walls to suppliers, customers, and business partners.

My current job as Chairman of Consulting for Perot Systems gives me access to many leaders who live and work on the frontiers of business, where the rules of industry are stretched (and sometimes broken). What I learn from these leaders is what I teach to others, and I write books to crystallize the findings of my latest field research.

My best work, however, has always been done with collaborators. And for this book, and the three that will follow in this series, I must acknowledge and thank the talented editors and researchers at Wordworks, Inc.—Donna Sammons Carpenter, Maurice Coyle, Ruth Hlavacek, Larry Martz, Molly Sammons Morris, Cindy Sammons, Robert Shnayerson, Robert W. Stock, and Ellen Wojahn; and Helen Rees and Joan Mazmanian of the Helen Rees Literary Agency. I would also like to acknowledge my very able assistant, Dee Dee Haggerty. And, as always, I am grateful to my wife, Lois, and my son, Adam, for their support, advice, and tolerance when I write. Lois and Adam keep me grounded.

Nothing pleases me more than sharing what we have discovered with people who might actually use it, especially when the ideas we have uncovered are not only fresh, but simple and practical. Ahead lies a world of creative companies with uncommon strategies and a singular record for making good on them. How do they do it?

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Introduction x

 

Chapter 1: It's a Smart, Smart, Smart, Smart World 2

Chapter 2: Compete by Seeing What Others Don't: How Sonicbids Spotted a $15 Billion Market 20

Chapter 3: Compete by Thinking Outside the Bubble: MinuteClinic Delivers Healthcare Retail 38

Chapter 4: Compete by Using All You Know: Basics Are Blazing at Smith & Wesson 58

Chapter 5: Compete by Changing Your Frame of Reference: How Shutterfly Saw the Bigger Picture 80

Chapter 6: Compete by Doing Everything Yourself: S.A. Robotics–Reaching Into Every Detail 96

Chapter 7: Compete by Tapping the Success of Others: Jibbitz Wins by Riding a Croc 114

Chapter 8: Compete by Creating Order Out of Chaos: Partsearch Finds the Item You Need 130

Chapter 9: Compete by Simplifying Complexity: SmartPak Brings Stability to the Stables 146

 

Epilogue 164

Index 176

What People are Saying About This

In this remarkably readable and incisive book, Jim Champy provides case studies of fast growing, innovative companies who have created and implemented successful strategies that are practical, market tested and reproducible in today's global marketplace. There are a wealth of lessons to be learned and applied from the experiences detailed here—insights that can help create sustainable competitive advantages and make the difference between dramatic growth and stasis.This timely contribution to the business press can be read in a few hours, and its lessons will endure for years.
—Denis Bovin, Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Bear Sterns & Co., Inc.

Preface

Praise Quotes for Outsmart! Praise Quotes for Outsmart!

"Champy's engaging prose, fascinating success stories, penetrating reflections, and provocative challenges to the status quo capture your full attention from the first page to the last and leave your mind swirling with new thoughts about how to exploit opportunities in a very different world."

— Ray Stata, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Analog Devices, Inc.

"To outsmart or be outsmarted, that is the question in modern business. Jim Champy has found the answer, in fact many answers, by looking inside amazingly successful companies. And he tells their simple stories in this book that is so delightfully short it can be read on one flight."

— Dr. Robert "Bob" Metcalfe, General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners

"In this remarkably readable and incisive book, Jim Champy provides case studies of fast growing, innovative companies that have created and implemented successful strategies that are practical, market tested, and reproducible in today's global marketplace."

— Denis A. Bovin, Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Bear Stearns & Co., Inc.

"This book shows how to spot opportunities in a world that looks, at times, like everything is done. Jim has strung together nine pearls that reveal the essence of entrepreneurship."

— Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande, Founder and Chairman, Sycamore Networks, Inc.

Preface

In my more than 30 years of work as a consultant and author, I've learned that the best ideas are found inside companies. But it wasn't always so. There was a time when I strayed from the realm of hands-on pragmatism to search the writings of philosophers for ideas that could be applied to business. To be honest, I thought that quoting the ancients made me sound smarter.

One day, while waxing philosophic during a speech in Monterey, Mexico, I encountered a far smarter gentleman of a certain age sitting in the front row. He interrupted me to ask how the philosophy of Mexico's nineteenth-century ruler, Gen. Antonio Santa Anna, could be applied to management. What could a man both admired and reviled contribute to business? The answer, which my interlocutor duly shared with all present, was a gem of pragmatism. Santa Anna, he told us, firmly believed that whatever worked was the right thing to do.

I have taken his lesson to heart, and this book describes the very real and practical strategies that are working for today's most successful businesses, strategies that I believe will sustain their success into the future. Because the primary goal of all good strategy is growth, the companies analyzed in these pages are among the world's fastest-growing enterprises.

But equally important, their revenue-producing ideas are neither hypothetical nor based on esoteric technologies. They don't require hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars or the vast sums from stock offerings to implement. Rather, they are strategies that any business leader can easily and immediately understand.

This is the first in a planned series comprising four compact volumes on the key topics of strategy, marketing, leadership, and operations. Taken together, the books aim to deliver the most current intelligence available on how to succeed in today's brave new world of business. An ambitious objective? Yes. But what I see a host of companies accomplishing today has me both excited and encouraged.

My ability to write about these matters does not derive from scholarly pursuits, although I've braved assorted academic challenges. Necessity drove me to learn by doing. It is a path that I recommend to anyone who seeks a powerful curriculum and an unforgettable teacher.

In my younger years, I assumed that I would join my family's construction business in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a mill city north of Boston. My quest for relevant knowledge sent me to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where I studied engineering, then to Boston College where I studied law. Finally, I returned to Lawrence for my early training in business.

In my family's company, there were no strategies, business plans, or budgets. We did what seemed right—day by day. We hired people, bought equipment—even acquired real estate—that seemed good for the business. Risk taking was a natural act. We had no spreadsheets, and the most advanced form of technology was a mechanical calculator. But the business worked—most of the time.

In Lawrence, I also had my first taste of a multicultural world. We had stone masons from Italy, carpenters from Quebec, and painters from Ireland. I learned a lot from these folks—something about teams, but more about how, when left alone, good people will do the right thing. I carried this and other lessons into my life in business.

Thanks to my MIT roommate, Tom Gerrity, I was later treated to an advanced course in commerce when he invited two MIT friends and me to join him in a business venture. In 1969, we launched Index Systems, an information-technology start-up based on Tom's Ph.D. research into automating management decision making. We each invested $370, the bet of a lifetime. Because our work was on the cutting edge of technology and business change, we serendipitously became an acquisition target for a bigger company nearly two decades later. In 1988, Computer Science Corporation (CSC) bought our firm and turned it into CSC's management-consulting arm. I became CSC Index's CEO and chairman after the Wharton School of Business lured away our hottest property, Tom, to become the school's dean. I was left to expand CSC Index into what became a $240 million company.

Out of those Index years came the ideas—developed with Michael Hammer and other colleagues—that formed my first book, Reengineering the Corporation, which argued that companies need to change radically and be managed from a process perspective. It became the best-selling business book of the 1990s. I followed this with a second book, Reengineering Management, in which I contended that leaders had to change their own ways of thinking before they could change their organizations. And in a third book, X-Engineering the Corporation, I made the case that process change must extend outside company walls to suppliers, customers, and business partners.

My current job as Chairman of Consulting for Perot Systems gives me access to many leaders who live and work on the frontiers of business, where the rules of industry are stretched (and sometimes broken). What I learn from these leaders is what I teach to others, and I write books to crystallize the findings of my latest field research.

My best work, however, has always been done with collaborators. And for this book, and the three that will follow in this series, I must acknowledge and thank the talented editors and researchers at Wordworks, Inc.—Donna Sammons Carpenter, Maurice Coyle, Ruth Hlavacek, Larry Martz, Molly Sammons Morris, Cindy Sammons, Robert Shnayerson, Robert W. Stock, and Ellen Wojahn; and Helen Rees and Joan Mazmanian of the Helen Rees Literary Agency. I would also like to acknowledge my very able assistant, Dee Dee Haggerty. And, as always, I am grateful to my wife, Lois, and my son, Adam, for their support, advice, and tolerance when I write. Lois and Adam keep me grounded.

Nothing pleases me more than sharing what we have discovered with people who might actually use it, especially when the ideas we have uncovered are not only fresh, but simple and practical. Ahead lies a world of creative companies with uncommon strategies and a singular record for making good on them. How do they do it?

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Editorial Reviews

"Champy provides case studies of eight exemplary companies, each highlighting a valuable insight for discovering opportunities. Each vignette describes a different business environment, making the book widely applicable. It differs from most innovation books (e.g., the highly regarded The Game-Changer, by A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan, 2008) by its external orientation. Champy recommends studying the environment first, then changing the firm to address newly discovered opportunities, which is opposite to the strategy presented in The Game-Changer." Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate students as well as practitioners. -- J.J. Janney, University of Dayton (Reviewed in 9/2008 CHOICE)

From the Publisher