Book Review
The Impossible Advantage: Winning the Competitive Game by Changing the Rules
by
Wolfram Wördemann, Andreas Buchholz, Ned Wiley
I don’t usually like business books, especially since I’ve retired from corporate life. But this one is pretty good.
It offers a practical method to generate fresh thinking to break free from the conventional wisdom and see a business from an entirely new perspective. I’ve read a lot of books and was exposed to many trendy techniques for doing that which were utter garbage. The most robotic conformity I ever saw was at “think outside the box” meetings at IBM. This book is not one of those.
The paradigm is that of a game, like baseball, which is played on two levels. A game itself is played according to rules on the baseball diamond — nine innings, three outs, etc. That is the first level. The second is that there exist league organizations that rewrite the rules. Clearly rewriting the rules can completely change outcomes of games. Subtract one run for every five errors and a different kind of team might win the pennant. Applying this to business, the existing competitive practices and players are the first level. They are playing a game according to the existing rules. A player, or a new entrant, can change those rules. This is a key insight, that players can change the rules during the game and don’t need anyone’s permission to do it. There is no “league” management.
Red Bull could never succeed as another soda pop against Coke and Pepsi. But as the originator of a new market — “energy drink”– not only does it succeed but Coke and Pepsi, despite their great resources cannot overcome being the “copy” to Red Bull’s “original” and cannot overtake it. So Red Bull changed the game from “soda pop”, where Coke was the Yankees, to “energy drink” where Red Bull is the Yankees and Coke is the Cubs.
This and other examples, drawn from the consulting experience of the authors, are interesting and support the thesis well. I also think that the game playing perspective has application outside of business. The book has sparked off a firecracker string of ideas for me having to do with how I see my life and goals outside of financial issues. Redefining problems leads to different solutions.
Five stars. Buy this one.
