write a one page reflection, about 500 words.

www

.

hbr.org

For the exclusive use of L. BING,

2

020

.

This document is authorized for use only b

y LINTING

BI

What Is Strategy?

by Michael E. Porter

Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article:

The Idea in Brief—the core idea
The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work

Article Summary

What Is Strategy?

A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further
exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

21

Further Reading

1

2

Reprint 96608
NG in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

http://www.hbr.org

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/relay.jhtml?name=itemdetail&referral=4320&id=96608

What Is Strategy?

The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.

C

O
P

YR
IG

H
T

©
2

00
0

H
A

R
V

A
R

D
B

U
SI

N
E

SS
S

C
H

O
O

L
P

U
B

LI
SH

IN
G

C
O

R
P

O
R

A
T

IO
N

. A
LL

R
IG

H
T

S
R

E
SE

R
V

E
D

.

or
ad
m
th
de
en
fec
str
pr
co
pe
ati
are
ind
fro
ca
av
m
co
tim
im
bu
th
do
yo
ab

St
su
pr
pa
tie
tie

The myriad activities that go into creating,
producing, selling, and delivering a product

service are the basic units of competitive
vantage. Operational effectivenes

s

eans performing these activities better—
at is, faster, or with fewer inputs and
fects—than rivals. Companies can reap
ormous advantages from operational ef

–

tiveness, as Japanese firms demon-
ated in the 1970s and 1980s with such
actices as total quality management and
ntinuous improvement. But from a com-
titive standpoint, the problem with oper-
onal effectiveness is that best practices
easily emulated. As all competitors in an
ustry adopt them, the productivit

y

ntier—the maximum value a company

n deliver at a

given

cost, given the best
ailable technology, skills, and manage-
ent techniques—shifts outward, lowering
sts and improving value at the same
e. Such competition produces absolute

provement in operational effectiveness,
t relative improvement for no one. And

e more benchmarking that companies
, the more competitive convergence
u have—that is, the more indistinguish-
le companies are from one another.

rategic positioning attempts to achieve
stainable competitive advantage by
eserving what is distinctive about a com-
ny. It means performing different activi-
s from rivals, or performing similar activi-
s in different ways.

This document is authorized for use only by LINTING

Three key principles underlie strategic positioning.

1. Strategy is the creation of a unique and
valuable position, involving a different set
of activities. Strategic position emerges from
three distinct sources:

• serving few needs of many customers (Jiffy
Lube provides only auto lubricants)

• serving broad needs of few customers
(Bessemer Trust targets only very high-
wealth clients)

• serving broad needs of many customers
in a narrow market (Carmike Cinemas op-
erates only in cities with a population
under 200,000)

2. Strategy requires you to make trade-offs
in competing—to choose what not to do.
Some competitive activities are incompatible;
thus, gains in one area can be achieved only
at the expense of another area. For example,
Neutrogena soap is positioned more as a me-
dicinal product than as a cleansing agent. The
company says “no” to sales based on deodor-
izing, gives up large volume, and sacrifices
manufacturing efficiencies. By contrast, Maytag’s
decision to extend its product line and ac-
quire other brands represented a failure to
make difficult trade-offs: the boost in reve-
nues came at the expense of return on sales.

3. Strategy involves creating “fit” among a
company’s activities. Fit has to do with the
ways a company’s activities interact and rein-
force one another. For example, Vanguard
Group aligns all of its activities with a low-cost
strategy; it distributes funds directly to con-
sumers and minimizes portfolio turnover. Fit
drives both competitive advantage and sus-
tainability: when activities mutually reinforce
each other, competitors can’t easily imitate
them. When Continental Lite tried to match a
few of Southwest Airlines’ activities, but not
the whole interlocking system, the results
were disastrous.

Employees need guidance about how to
deepen a strategic position rather than
broaden or compromise it. About how to ex-
tend the company’s uniqueness while
strengthening the fit among its activities. This
work of deciding which target group of cus-
tomers and needs to serve requires discipline,
the ability to set limits, and forthright commu-
nication. Clearly, strategy and leadership are
inextricably linked.

page 1
BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

by

Michael E. Porter

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.

C
O
P
YR
IG
H
T

©
1

99
6

H
A
R
V
A
R
D
B
U
SI
N
E
SS
S
C
H
O
O
L
P
U
B
LI
SH
IN
G
C
O
R
P
O
R
A
T
IO
N
. A
LL
R
IG
H
T
S
R
E
SE
R
V
E
D
.

harvard business review • november–

This document is authorized for use only b

I. Operational Effectiveness Is Not

Strategy

For almost two decades, managers have been
learning to play by a new set of rules. Compa-
nies must be flexible to respond rapidly to
competitive and market changes. They must
benchmark continuously to achieve best prac-
tice. They must outsource aggressively to gain
efficiencies. And they must nurture a few core
competencies in race to stay ahead of rivals.

Positioning—once the heart of strategy—is
rejected as too static for today’s dynamic mar-
kets and changing technologies. According to
the new dogma, rivals can quickly copy any
market position, and competitive advantage is,
at best, temporary.

But those beliefs are dangerous half-truths,
and they are leading more and more companies
down the path of mutually destructive compe-
tition. True, some barriers to competition are
falling as regulation eases and markets become
global. True, companies have properly invested
energy in becoming leaner and more nimble.
In many industries, however, what some call

hypercompetition is a self-inflicted wound, not
the inevitable outcome of a changing paradigm
of competition.

The root of the problem is the failure to dis-
tinguish between operational effectiveness and
strategy. The quest for productivity, quality, and
speed has spawned a remarkable number of
management tools and techniques: total quality
management, benchmarking, time-based com-
petition, outsourcing, partnering, reengineering,
change management. Although the resulting
operational improvements have often been
dramatic, many companies have been frustrated
by their inability to translate those gains into
sustainable profitability. And bit by bit, almost
imperceptibly, management tools have taken
the place of strategy. As managers push to im-
prove on all fronts, they move farther away
from viable competitive positions.

Operational Effectiveness: Necessary but Not
Sufficient. Operational effectiveness and strategy
are both essential to superior performance,
which, after all, is the primary goal of any en-
terprise. But they work in very different ways.

december 1996 page 2
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Michael E. Porter

is the C. Roland
Christensen Professor of Business
Administration at the Harvard Business
School in Boston, Massachusetts.

This article has benefited greatly
from the assistance of many individuals
and companies. The author gives spe-
cial thanks to Jan Rivkin, the coautho

r

of a related paper. Substantial research
contributions have been made by
Nicolaj Siggelkow, Dawn Sylvester, and
Lucia Marshall. Tarun Khanna, Roger
Martin, and Anita McGahan have pro-
vided especially extensive comments.

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

A company can outperform rivals only if it can
establish a difference that it can preserve. It must
deliver greater value to customers or create
comparable value at a lower cost, or do both.
The arithmetic of superior profitability then fol-
lows: delivering greater value allows a company
to charge higher average unit prices; greater
efficiency results in lower average unit costs.

Ultimately, all differences between companies
in cost or price derive from the hundreds of ac-
tivities required to create, produce, sell, and de-
liver their products or services, such as calling
on customers, assembling final products, and
training employees. Cost is generated by per-
forming activities, and cost advantage arises
from performing particular activities more effi-
ciently than competitors. Similarly, differentia-
tion arises from both the choice of activities and
how they are performed. Activities, then are the
basic units of competitive advantage. Overall ad-
vantage or disadvantage results from all a com-
pany’s activities, not only a few.1

Operational effectiveness (OE) means per-
forming similar activities better than rivals per-
form them. Operational effectiveness includes
but is not limited to efficiency. It refers to any
number of practices that allow a company to bet-
ter utilize its inputs by, for example, reducing de-
fects in products or developing better products
faster. In contrast, strategic positioning means
performing different activities from rivals’ or per-
forming similar activities in different ways.

Differences in operational effectiveness among
companies are pervasive. Some companies
are able to get more out of their inputs than
others because they eliminate wasted effort,
employ more advanced technology, motivate
employees better, or have greater insight into
managing particular activities or sets of activ-
ities. Such differences in operational effective-
ness are an important source of differences in
profitability among competitors because they
directly affect relative cost positions and
levels of differentiation.

Differences in operational effectiveness
were at the heart of the Japanese challenge to
Western companies in the 1980s. The Japa-
nese were so far ahead of rivals in operational
effectiveness that they could offer lower

cost

and superior quality at the same time. It is
worth dwelling on this point, because so much
recent thinking about competition depends
on it. Imagine for a moment a productivity
frontier that constitutes the sum of all existing

best practices at any given time. Think of it as
the maximum value that a company deliver-
ing a particular product or service can create
at a given cost, using the best available tech-
nologies, skills, management techniques, and
purchased inputs. The productivity frontier
can apply to individual activities, to groups
of linked activities such as order processing
and manufacturing, and to an entire com-
pany’s activities. When a company improves
its operational effectiveness, it moves toward
the frontier. Doing so may require capital in-
vestment, different personnel, or simply new
ways of managing.

The productivity frontier is constantly shift-
ing outward as new technologies and man-
agement approaches are developed and as
new inputs become available. Laptop com-
puters, mobile communications, the Internet,
and software such as Lotus Notes, for exam-
ple, have redefined the productivity frontier
for sales-force operations and created rich
possibilities for linking sales with such activi-
ties as order processing and after-sales sup-
port. Similarly, lean production, which involves a
family of activities, has allowed substantial
improvements in manufacturing productivity
and asset utilization.

For at least the past decade, managers have
been preoccupied with improving operational
effectiveness. Through programs such as TQM,
time-based competition, and benchmarking,
they have changed how they perform activities
in order to eliminate inefficiencies, improve
customer satisfaction, and achieve best practice.
Hoping to keep up with shifts in the produc-
tivity frontier, managers have embraced con-
tinuous improvement, empowerment, change
management, and the so-called learning orga-
nization. The popularity of outsourcing and
the virtual corporation reflect the growing
recognition that it is difficult to perform all
activities as productively as specialists.

As companies move to the frontier, they can
often improve on multiple dimensions of per-
formance at the same time. For example, manu-
facturers that adopted the Japanese practice of
rapid changeovers in the 1980s were able to
lower cost and improve differentiation simul-
taneously. What were once believed to be
real trade-offs—between defects and costs, for
example—turned out to be illusions created by
poor operational effectiveness. Managers have
learned to reject such false trade-offs.

december 1996 page 3
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Operatio
Versus S

dereviled e ulav rey u b ecirp no
N

low

high

high
For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

Constant improvement in operational ef-
fectiveness is necessary to achieve superior
profitability. However, it is not usually suffi-
cient. Few companies have competed success-
fully on the basis of operational effectiveness
over an extended period, and staying ahead of
rivals gets harder every day. The most obvious
reason for that is the rapid diffusion of best
practices. Competitors can quickly imitate
management techniques, new technologies,
input improvements, and superior ways of
meeting customers’ needs. The most generic
solutions—those that can be used in multiple
settings—diffuse the fastest. Witness the pro-
liferation of OE techniques accelerated by
support from consultants.

OE competition shifts the productivity fron-
tier outward, effectively raising the bar for
everyone. But although such competition pro-
duces absolute improvement in operational ef-
fectiveness, it leads to relative improvement
for no one. Consider the $5 billion-plus U.S.
commercial-printing industry. The major players—
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Quebecor,
World Color Press, and Big Flower Press—are
competing head to head, serving all types of
customers, offering the same array of printing
technologies (gravure and web offset), in-
vesting heavily in the same new equipment,
running their presses faster, and reducing crew
sizes. But the resulting major productivity

gains are being captured by customers and
equipment suppliers, not retained in superior
profitability. Even industry-leader Donnelley’s
profit margin, consistently higher than 7% in
the 1980s, fell to less than 4.6% in 1995. This
pattern is playing itself out in industry after
industry. Even the Japanese, pioneers of the
new competition, suffer from persistently low
profits. (See the insert “

Japanese Companies

Rarely Have Strategies.”)

The second reason that improved opera-
tional effectiveness is insufficient—competitive
convergence—is more subtle and insidious. The
more benchmarking companies do, the more
they look alike. The more that rivals out-
source activities to efficient third parties,
often the same ones, the more generic those
activities become. As rivals imitate one an-
other’s improvements in quality, cycle times,
or supplier partnerships, strategies converge
and competition becomes a series of races
down identical paths that no one can win.
Competition based on operational effective-
ness alone is mutually destructive, leading
to wars of attrition that can be arrested only
by limiting competition.

The recent wave of industry consolidation
through mergers makes sense in the context of
OE competition. Driven by performance pres-
sures but lacking strategic vision, company
after company has had no better idea than to
buy up its rivals. The competitors left standing
are often those that outlasted others, not com-
panies with real advantage.

After a decade of impressive gains in opera-
tional effectiveness, many companies are facing
diminishing returns. Continuous improvement
has been etched on managers’ brains. But its
tools unwittingly draw companies toward imi-
tation and homogeneity. Gradually, managers
have let operational effectiveness supplant strat-
egy. The result is zero-sum competition, static or
declining prices, and pressures on costs that
compromise companies’ ability to invest in the
business for the long term.

II. Strategy Rests on Unique
Activities
Competitive strategy is about being different.
It means deliberately choosing a different set
of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.

Southwest Airlines Company, for example,
offers short-haul, low-cost, point-to-point

service

between midsize cities and secondary airports

nal Effectiveness
trategic Positioning

Relative cost position

low

Productivity Frontier
(state of best practice)

december 1996 page 4
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Japanese Companies

The Japanese triggered a global revol
tion in operational effectiveness in th
1970s and 1980s, pioneering practices
such as total quality management an
continuous improvement. As a result,
Japanese manufacturers enjoyed sub-
stantial cost and quality advantages fo
many years.

But Japanese companies rarely de
veloped distinct strategic positions
the kind discussed in this article.
Those that did—Sony, Canon, and Sega,
for example—were the exception rathe
than the rule. Most Japanese compa
nies imitate and emulate one anothe
All rivals offer most if not all produc
varieties, features, and services; the
employ all channels and match one
anothers’ plant configurations.

The dangers of Japanese-style comp
tition are now becoming easier to rec
ognize. In the 1980s, with rivals opera
ing far from the productivity frontier,
seemed possible to win on both cost
and quality indefinitely. Japanese com
panies were all able to grow in an ex-
panding domestic economy and by
penetrating global markets. They ap-

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

in large cities. Southwest avoids large airports
and does not fly great distances. Its customers
include business travelers, families, and stu-
dents. Southwest’s frequent departures and
low fares attract price-sensitive customers who
otherwise would travel by bus or car, and
convenience-oriented travelers who would
choose a full-service airline on other routes.

Most managers describe strategic position-
ing in terms of their customers: “Southwest
Airlines serves price- and convenience-sensitive
travelers,” for example. But the essence of strat-
egy is in the activities—choosing to perform
activities differently or to perform different ac-
tivities than rivals. Otherwise, a strategy is
nothing more than a marketing slogan that
will not withstand competition.

A full-service airline is configured to get
passengers from almost any point A to any point
B. To reach a large number of destinations and
serve passengers with connecting flights, full-

service airlines employ a hub-and-spoke system
centered on major airports. To attract passengers
who desire more comfort, they offer first-class
or business-class service. To accommodate
passengers who must change planes, they co-
ordinate schedules and check and transfer
baggage. Because some passengers will be
traveling for many hours, full-service airlines
serve meals.

Southwest, in contrast, tailors all its activities
to deliver low-cost, convenient service on its par-
ticular type of route. Through fast turnarounds at
the gate of only 15 minutes, Southwest is able to
keep planes flying longer hours than rivals and
provide frequent departures with fewer aircraft.
Southwest does not offer meals, assigned seats,
interline baggage checking, or premium classes
of service. Automated ticketing at the gate
encourages customers to bypass travel agents, al-
lowing Southwest to avoid their commissions.
A standardized fleet of 737 aircraft boosts the
efficiency of maintenance.

Southwest has staked out a unique and valu-
able strategic position based on a tailored set
of activities. On the routes served by South-
west, a full-service airline could never be as
convenient or as low cost.

Ikea, the global furniture retailer based in
Sweden, also has a clear strategic positioning.
Ikea targets young furniture buyers who want
style at low cost. What turns this marketing
concept into a strategic positioning is the tai-
lored set of activities that make it work. Like
Southwest, Ikea has chosen to perform activi-
ties differently from its rivals.

Consider the typical furniture store. Show-
rooms display samples of the merchandise.
One area might contain 25 sofas; another will
display five dining tables. But those items rep-
resent only a fraction of the choices available
to customers. Dozens of books displaying fabric
swatches or wood samples or alternate styles
offer customers thousands of product varieties
to choose from. Salespeople often escort cus-
tomers through the store, answering questions
and helping them navigate this maze of choices.
Once a customer makes a selection, the order
is relayed to a third-party manufacturer. With
luck, the furniture will be delivered to the cus-
tomer’s home within six to eight weeks. This is
a value chain that maximizes customization
and service but does so at high cost.

In contrast, Ikea serves customers who are
happy to trade off service for cost. Instead of

Rarely Have Strategies
u-
e

d

r

–
of

r

–

r.
t

y

e-
–
t-
it

–

peared unstoppable. But as the gap in
operational effectiveness narrows, Jap-
anese companies are increasingly
caught in a trap of their own making. If
they are to escape the mutually destruc-
tive battles now ravaging their perfor-
mance, Japanese companies will have
to learn strategy.

To do so, they may have to overcome
strong cultural barriers. Japan is noto-
riously consensus oriented, and com-
panies have a strong tendency to medi-
ate differences among individuals
rather than accentuate them. Strategy,
on the other hand, requires hard
choices. The Japanese also have a
deeply ingrained service tradition that
predisposes them to go to great
lengths to satisfy any need a customer
expresses. Companies that compete in
that way end up blurring their distinct
positioning, becoming all things to
all customers.

This discussion of Japan is drawn from
the author’s research with Hirotaka
Takeuchi, with help from Mariko
Sakakibara.

december 1996 page 5
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Finding New Position

Strategic competition can be thought o
the process of perceiving new position
woo customers from established positi
draw new customers into the market. F
ample, superstores offering depth of m
chandise in a single product category t
market share from broad-line departm
stores offering a more limited selection
many categories. Mail-order catalogs p
customers who crave convenience. In p
ple, incumbents and entrepreneurs fac
same challenges in finding new strateg
sitions. In practice, new entrants often
the edge.

Strategic positionings are often not o
ous, and finding them requires creativit
insight. New entrants often discover un

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

having a sales associate trail customers around
the store, Ikea uses a self-service model based
on clear, in-store displays. Rather than rely
solely on third-party manufacturers, Ikea designs
its own low-cost, modular, ready-to-assemble
furniture to fit its positioning. In huge stores,
Ikea displays every product it sells in room-like
settings, so customers don’t need a decorator
to help them imagine how to put the pieces to-
gether. Adjacent to the furnished showrooms
is a warehouse section with the products in
boxes on pallets. Customers are expected to do
their own pickup and delivery, and Ikea will
even sell you a roof rack for your car that you
can return for a refund on your next visit.

Although much of its low-cost position comes
from having customers “do it themselves,” Ikea
offers a number of extra services that its com-
petitors do not. In-store child care is one. Ex-
tended hours are another. Those services are
uniquely aligned with the needs of its custom-
ers, who are young, not wealthy, likely to
have children (but no nanny), and, because
they work for a living, have a need to shop
at odd hours.

The Origins of Strategic Positions. Strategic
positions emerge from three distinct sources,
which are not mutually exclusive and often
overlap. First, positioning can be based on pro-
ducing a subset of an industry’s products or
services. I call this variety-based positioning
because it is based on the choice of product

or service varieties rather than customer
segments. Variety-based positioning makes
economic sense when a company can best
produce particular products or services using
distinctive sets of activities.

Jiffy Lube International, for instance, spe-
cializes in automotive lubricants and does not
offer other car repair or maintenance services.
Its value chain produces faster service at a
lower cost than broader line repair shops, a
combination so attractive that many customers
subdivide their purchases, buying oil changes
from the focused competitor, Jiffy Lube, and
going to rivals for other services.

The Vanguard Group, a leader in the mutual
fund industry, is another example of variety-
based positioning. Vanguard provides an
array of common stock, bond, and money
market funds that offer predictable perfor-
mance and rock-bottom expenses. The com-
pany’s investment approach deliberately
sacrifices the possibility of extraordinary per-
formance in any one year for good relative
performance in every year. Vanguard is known,
for example, for its index funds. It avoids mak-
ing bets on interest rates and steers clear of
narrow stock groups. Fund managers keep
trading levels low, which holds expenses
down; in addition, the company discourages
customers from rapid buying and selling be-
cause doing so drives up costs and can force a
fund manager to trade in order to deploy new

s: The Entrepreneurial Edge
f as

s that
ons or
or ex-
er-
ake
ent
in

ick off
rinci-
e the
ic po-
have

bvi-
y and
ique

positions that have been available but simply
overlooked by established competitors. Ikea,
for example, recognized a customer group
that had been ignored or served poorly. Cir-
cuit City Stores’ entry into used cars, CarMax,
is based on a new way of performing activities—
extensive refurbishing of cars, product guaran-
tees, no-haggle pricing, sophisticated use of in-
house customer financing—that has long
been open to incumbents.

New entrants can prosper by occupying a
position that a competitor once held but has
ceded through years of imitation and strad-
dling. And entrants coming from other indus-
tries can create new positions because of dis-
tinctive activities drawn from their other
businesses. CarMax borrows heavily from

Circuit City’s expertise in inventory manage-
ment, credit, and other activities in consumer
electronics retailing.

Most commonly, however, new positions
open up because of change. New customer
groups or purchase occasions arise; new
needs emerge as societies evolve; new distri-
bution channels appear; new technologies
are developed; new machinery or informa-
tion systems become available. When such
changes happen, new entrants, unencum-
bered by a long history in the industry, can
often more easily perceive the potential
for a new way of competing. Unlike incum-
bents, newcomers can be more flexible be-
cause they face no trade-offs with their
existing activities.

december 1996 page 6
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

A company can
outperform rivals only if
it can establish a
difference that it can
preserve.

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

capital and raise cash for redemptions.
Vanguard also takes a consistent low-cost ap-
proach to managing distribution, customer
service, and marketing. Many investors in-
clude one or more Vanguard funds in their
portfolio, while buying aggressively managed
or specialized funds from competitors.

The people who use Vanguard or Jiffy
Lube are responding to a superior value chain
for a particular type of service. A variety-based
positioning can serve a wide array of custom-
ers, but for most it will meet only a subset of
their needs.

A second basis for positioning is that of serv-
ing most or all the needs of a particular group
of customers. I call this needs-based positioning,
which comes closer to traditional thinking
about targeting a segment of customers. It arises
when there are groups of customers with dif-
fering needs, and when a tailored set of activi-
ties can serve those needs best. Some groups of
customers are more price sensitive than others,
demand different product features, and need
varying amounts of information, support, and
services. Ikea’s customers are a good example
of such a group. Ikea seeks to meet all the
home furnishing needs of its target customers,
not just a subset of them.

A variant of needs-based positioning arises
when the same customer has different needs
on different occasions or for different types of
transactions. The same person, for example,
may have different needs when traveling on
business than when traveling for pleasure with
the family. Buyers of cans—beverage compa-
nies, for example—will likely have different
needs from their primary supplier than from
their secondary source.

It is intuitive for most managers to conceive
of their business in terms of the customers’
needs they are meeting. But a critical element
of needs-based positioning is not at all intuitive
and is often overlooked. Differences in needs
will not translate into meaningful positions
unless the best set of activities to satisfy them
also differs. If that were not the case, every
competitor could meet those same needs, and
there would be nothing unique or valuable
about the positioning.

In private banking, for example, Bessemer
Trust Company targets families with a mini-
mum of $5 million in investable assets who
want capital preservation combined with
wealth accumulation. By assigning one sophis-

ticated account officer for every 14 families,
Bessemer has configured its activities for per-
sonalized service. Meetings, for example, are
more likely to be held at a client’s ranch or
yacht than in the office. Bessemer offers a wide
array of customized services, including invest-
ment management and estate administration,
oversight of oil and gas investments, and ac-
counting for racehorses and aircraft. Loans, a
staple of most private banks, are rarely needed
by Bessemer’s clients and make up a tiny frac-
tion of its client balances and income. Despite
the most generous compensation of account
officers and the highest personnel cost as a per-
centage of operating expenses, Bessemer’s dif-
ferentiation with its target families produces a
return on equity estimated to be the highest of
any private banking competitor.

Citibank’s private bank, on the other hand,
serves clients with minimum assets of about
$250,000 who, in contrast to Bessemer’s clients,
want convenient access to loans—from jumbo
mortgages to deal financing. Citibank’s account
managers are primarily lenders. When clients
need other services, their account manager re-
fers them to other Citibank specialists, each of
whom handles prepackaged products. Citibank’s
system is less customized than Bessemer’s and
allows it to have a lower manager-to-client
ratio of 1:125. Biannual office meetings are of-
fered only for the largest clients. Both Bessemer
and Citibank have tailored their activities to
meet the needs of a different group of private
banking customers. The same value chain can-
not profitably meet the needs of both groups.

The third basis for positioning is that of seg-
menting customers who are accessible in dif-
ferent ways. Although their needs are similar
to those of other customers, the best configu-
ration of activities to reach them is different. I
call this access-based positioning. Access can be
a function of customer geography or cus-
tomer scale—or of anything that requires a
different set of activities to reach customers
in the best way.

Segmenting by access is less common and
less well understood than the other two bases.
Carmike Cinemas, for example, operates movie
theaters exclusively in cities and towns with
populations under 200,000. How does Car-
mike make money in markets that are not only
small but also won’t support big-city ticket
prices? It does so through a set of activities
that result in a lean cost structure. Carmike’s

december 1996 page 7
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

The Connection with

In

Competitive Strategy

(The Free Press
1985), I introduced the concept of ge-
neric strategies—cost leadership, diffe
entiation, and focus—to represent the
alternative strategic positions in an in-
dustry. The generic strategies remain
useful to characterize strategic position
at the simplest and broadest level. Van
guard, for instance, is an example of a
cost leadership strategy, whereas Ikea,
with its narrow customer group, is an e
ample of cost-based focus. Neutrogena
is a focused differentiator. The bases fo
positioning—varieties, needs, and access—
carry the understanding of those gener
strategies to a greater level of specificit

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

small-town customers can be served through
standardized, low-cost theater complexes re-
quiring fewer screens and less sophisticated
projection technology than big-city theaters.
The company’s proprietary information system
and management process eliminate the need
for local administrative staff beyond a single
theater manager. Carmike also reaps advan-
tages from centralized purchasing, lower rent
and payroll costs (because of its locations), and
rock-bottom corporate overhead of 2% (the in-
dustry average is 5%). Operating in small com-
munities also allows Carmike to practice a
highly personal form of marketing in which
the theater manager knows patrons and pro-
motes attendance through personal contacts.
By being the dominant if not the only theater
in its markets—the main competition is often
the high school football team—Carmike is also
able to get its pick of films and negotiate better
terms with distributors.

Rural versus urban-based customers are
one example of access driving differences in
activities. Serving small rather than large cus-
tomers or densely rather than sparsely situ-
ated customers are other examples in which
the best way to configure marketing, order
processing, logistics, and after-sale service ac-
tivities to meet the similar needs of distinct
groups will often differ.

Positioning is not only about carving out a
niche. A position emerging from any of the
sources can be broad or narrow. A focused

competitor, such as Ikea, targets the special
needs of a subset of customers and designs its
activities accordingly. Focused competitors
thrive on groups of customers who are over-
served (and hence overpriced) by more broadly
targeted competitors, or underserved (and
hence underpriced). A broadly targeted com-
petitor—for example, Vanguard or Delta Air
Lines—serves a wide array of customers, per-
forming a set of activities designed to meet
their common needs. It ignores or meets only
partially the more idiosyncratic needs of par-
ticular customer customer groups.

Whatever the basis—variety, needs, access,
or some combination of the three—positioning
requires a tailored set of activities because it is
always a function of differences on the supply
side; that is, of differences in activities. How-
ever, positioning is not always a function of
differences on the demand, or customer,
side. Variety and access positionings, in partic-
ular, do not rely on any customer differences.
In practice, however, variety or access differ-
ences often accompany needs differences. The
tastes—that is, the needs—of Carmike’s small-
town customers, for instance, run more toward
comedies, Westerns, action films, and family
entertainment. Carmike does not run any films
rated NC-17.

Having defined positioning, we can now
begin to answer the question, “What is strategy?”
Strategy is the creation of a unique and valu-
able position, involving a different set of activi-
ties. If there were only one ideal position,
there would be no need for strategy. Compa-
nies would face a simple imperative—win the
race to discover and preempt it. The essence of
strategic positioning is to choose activities that
are different from rivals’. If the same set of ac-
tivities were best to produce all varieties, meet
all needs, and access all customers, companies
could easily shift among them and operational
effectiveness would determine performance.

III. A Sustainable Strategic Position
Requires Trade-offs
Choosing a unique position, however, is not
enough to guarantee a sustainable advantage.
A valuable position will attract imitation by in-
cumbents, who are likely to copy it in one of
two ways.

First, a competitor can reposition itself to
match the superior performer. J.C. Penney,
for instance, has been repositioning itself

Generic Strategies
,

r-

s
–

x-

r

ic
y.

Ikea and Southwest are both cost-based
focusers, for example, but Ikea’s focus is
based on the needs of a customer group,
and Southwest’s is based on offering a
particular service variety.

The generic strategies framework in-
troduced the need to choose in order
to avoid becoming caught between
what I then described as the inherent
contradictions of different strategies.
Trade-offs between the activities of in-
compatible positions explain those
contradictions. Witness Continental
Lite, which tried and failed to compete
in two ways at once.

december 1996 page 8
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

The essence of strategy is
choosing to perform
activities differently than
rivals do.

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

from a Sears clone to a more upscale, fashion-
oriented, soft-goods retailer. A second and
far more common type of imitation is strad-
dling. The straddler seeks to match the benefits
of a successful position while maintaining its
existing position. It grafts new features, ser-
vices, or technologies onto the activities it
already performs.

For those who argue that competitors can
copy any market position, the airline industry
is a perfect test case. It would seem that nearly
any competitor could imitate any other air-
line’s activities. Any airline can buy the same
planes, lease the gates, and match the menus
and ticketing and baggage handling services
offered by other airlines.

Continental Airlines saw how well South-
west was doing and decided to straddle. While
maintaining its position as a full-service air-
line, Continental also set out to match South-
west on a number of point-to-point routes.
The airline dubbed the new service Conti-
nental Lite. It eliminated meals and first-
class service, increased departure frequency,
lowered fares, and shortened turnaround
time at the gate. Because Continental remained
a full-service airline on other routes, it contin-
ued to use travel agents and its mixed fleet
of planes and to provide baggage checking
and seat assignments.

But a strategic position is not sustainable
unless there are trade-offs with other positions.
Trade-offs occur when activities are incom-
patible. Simply put, a trade-off means that
more of one thing necessitates less of another.
An airline can choose to serve meals—adding
cost and slowing turnaround time at the gate—
or it can choose not to, but it cannot do both
without bearing major inefficiencies.

Trade-offs create the need for choice and
protect against repositioners and straddlers.
Consider Neutrogena soap. Neutrogena Cor-
poration’s variety-based positioning is built on
a “kind to the skin,” residue-free soap formu-
lated for pH balance. With a large detail force
calling on dermatologists, Neutrogena’s mar-
keting strategy looks more like a drug com-
pany’s than a soap maker’s. It advertises in
medical journals, sends direct mail to doctors,
attends medical conferences, and performs re-
search at its own Skincare Institute. To rein-
force its positioning, Neutrogena originally
focused its distribution on drugstores and
avoided price promotions. Neutrogena uses a

slow, more expensive manufacturing process
to mold its fragile soap.

In choosing this position, Neutrogena said
no to the deodorants and skin softeners that
many customers desire in their soap. It gave up
the large-volume potential of selling through
supermarkets and using price promotions. It
sacrificed manufacturing efficiencies to achieve
the soap’s desired attributes. In its original po-
sitioning, Neutrogena made a whole raft of
trade-offs like those, trade-offs that protected
the company from imitators.

Trade-offs arise for three reasons. The first is
inconsistencies in image or reputation. A com-
pany known for delivering one kind of value
may lack credibility and confuse customers—or
even undermine its reputation—if it delivers an-
other kind of value or attempts to deliver two
inconsistent things at the same time. For exam-
ple, Ivory soap, with its position as a basic, inex-
pensive everyday soap, would have a hard time
reshaping its image to match Neutrogena’s pre-
mium “medical” reputation. Efforts to create a
new image typically cost tens or even hundreds
of millions of dollars in a major industry—a
powerful barrier to imitation.

Second, and more important, trade-offs arise
from activities themselves. Different positions
(with their tailored activities) require different
product configurations, different equipment,
different employee behavior, different skills,
and different management systems. Many
trade-offs reflect inflexibilities in machinery,
people, or systems. The more Ikea has config-
ured its activities to lower costs by having its
customers do their own assembly and delivery,
the less able it is to satisfy customers who re-
quire higher levels of service.

However, trade-offs can be even more basic.
In general, value is destroyed if an activity is
overdesigned or underdesigned for its use. For
example, even if a given salesperson were capa-
ble of providing a high level of assistance to
one customer and none to another, the sales-
person’s talent (and some of his or her cost)
would be wasted on the second customer.
Moreover, productivity can improve when vari-
ation of an activity is limited. By providing a
high level of assistance all the time, the sales-
person and the entire sales activity can often
achieve efficiencies of learning and scale.

Finally, trade-offs arise from limits on inter-
nal coordination and control. By clearly choos-
ing to compete in one way and not another,

december 1996 page 9
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Strategic positions can be
based on customers’
needs, customers’
accessibility, or the
variety of a company’s
products or services.

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

senior management makes organizational
priorities clear. Companies that try to be all
things to all customers, in contrast, risk confu-
sion in the trenches as employees attempt to
make day-to-day operating decisions without a
clear framework.

Positioning trade-offs are pervasive in
competition and essential to strategy. They
create the need for choice and purposefully
limit what a company offers. They deter
straddling or repositioning, because competi-
tors that engage in those approaches under-
mine their strategies and degrade the value
of their existing activities.

Trade-offs ultimately grounded Continental
Lite. The airline lost hundreds of millions of
dollars, and the CEO lost his job. Its planes
were delayed leaving congested hub cities or
slowed at the gate by baggage transfers. Late
flights and cancellations generated a thousand
complaints a day. Continental Lite could not
afford to compete on price and still pay stan-
dard travel-agent commissions, but neither
could it do without agents for its full-service
business. The airline compromised by cutting
commissions for all Continental flights across
the board. Similarly, it could not afford to offer
the same frequent-flier benefits to travelers
paying the much lower ticket prices for Lite
service. It compromised again by lowering the
rewards of Continental’s entire frequent-flier
program. The results: angry travel agents and
full-service customers.

Continental tried to compete in two ways at
once. In trying to be low cost on some routes
and full service on others, Continental paid an
enormous straddling penalty. If there were no
trade-offs between the two positions, Conti-
nental could have succeeded. But the absence
of trade-offs is a dangerous half-truth that
managers must unlearn. Quality is not always
free. Southwest’s convenience, one kind of
high quality, happens to be consistent with low
costs because its frequent departures are facili-
tated by a number of low-cost practices—fast
gate turnarounds and automated ticketing, for
example. However, other dimensions of air-
line quality—an assigned seat, a meal, or bag-
gage transfer—require costs to provide.

In general, false trade-offs between cost and
quality occur primarily when there is redun-
dant or wasted effort, poor control or accuracy,
or weak coordination. Simultaneous improve-
ment of cost and differentiation is possible

only when a company begins far behind the
productivity frontier or when the frontier
shifts outward. At the frontier, where compa-
nies have achieved current best practice, the
trade-off between cost and differentiation is
very real indeed.

After a decade of enjoying productivity ad-
vantages, Honda Motor Company and Toyota
Motor Corporation recently bumped up
against the frontier. In 1995, faced with in-
creasing customer resistance to higher auto-
mobile prices, Honda found that the only way
to produce a less-expensive car was to skimp
on features. In the United States, it replaced
the rear disk brakes on the Civic with lower-
cost drum brakes and used cheaper fabric for
the back seat, hoping customers would not
notice. Toyota tried to sell a version of its best-
selling Corolla in Japan with unpainted
bumpers and cheaper seats. In Toyota’s case,
customers rebelled, and the company quickly
dropped the new model.

For the past decade, as managers have im-
proved operational effectiveness greatly, they
have internalized the idea that eliminating
trade-offs is a good thing. But if there are no
trade-offs companies will never achieve a sus-
tainable advantage. They will have to run
faster and faster just to stay in place.

As we return to the question, What is
strategy? we see that trade-offs add a new di-
mension to the answer. Strategy is making
trade-offs in competing. The essence of strat-
egy is choosing what not to do. Without trade-
offs, there would be no need for choice and
thus no need for strategy. Any good idea
could and would be quickly imitated. Again,
performance would once again depend
wholly on operational effectiveness.

IV. Fit Drives Both Competitive
Advantage and Sustainability
Positioning choices determine not only which
activities a company will perform and how it
will configure individual activities but also
how activities relate to one another. While op-
erational effectiveness is about achieving ex-
cellence in individual activities, or functions,
strategy is about combining activities.

Southwest’s rapid gate turnaround, which
allows frequent departures and greater use of
aircraft, is essential to its high-convenience,
low-cost positioning. But how does Southwest
achieve it? Part of the answer lies in the com-

december 1996 page 10
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Trade-offs are essential
to strategy. They create
the need for choice and
purposefully limit what a
company offers.

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

pany’s well-paid gate and ground crews, whose
productivity in turnarounds is enhanced by
flexible union rules. But the bigger part of the
answer lies in how Southwest performs other
activities. With no meals, no seat assignment,
and no interline baggage transfers, Southwest
avoids having to perform activities that slow
down other airlines. It selects airports and
routes to avoid congestion that introduces de-
lays. Southwest’s strict limits on the type and
length of routes make standardized

aircraft

possible: every aircraft Southwest turns is a
Boeing 737.

What is Southwest’s core competence? Its
key success factors? The correct answer is that
everything matters. Southwest’s strategy in-
volves a whole system of activities, not a col-
lection of parts. Its competitive advantage
comes from the way its activities fit and rein-
force one another.

Fit locks out imitators by creating a chain
that is as strong as its strongest link. As in most
companies with good strategies, Southwest’s
activities complement one another in ways
that create real economic value. One activity’s
cost, for example, is lowered because of the
way other activities are performed. Similarly,
one activity’s value to customers can be en-
hanced by a company’s other activities. That is
the way strategic fit creates competitive advan-
tage and superior profitability.

Types of Fit. The importance of fit among
functional policies is one of the oldest ideas in
strategy. Gradually, however, it has been sup-
planted on the management agenda. Rather
than seeing the company as a whole, manag-
ers have turned to “core” competencies, “criti-
cal” resources, and “key” success factors. In
fact, fit is a far more central component of
competitive advantage than most realize.

Fit is important because discrete activities
often affect one another. A sophisticated sales
force, for example, confers a greater advan-
tage when the company’s product embodies
premium technology and its marketing ap-
proach emphasizes customer assistance and
support. A production line with high levels of
model variety is more valuable when com-
bined with an inventory and order processing
system that minimizes the need for stocking
finished goods, a sales process equipped to ex-
plain and encourage customization, and an
advertising theme that stresses the benefits of
product variations that meet a customer’s

special needs. Such complementarities are
pervasive in strategy. Although some fit
among activities is generic and applies to
many companies, the most valuable fit is
strategy-specific because it enhances a posi-
tion’s uniqueness and amplifies trade-offs.2

There are three types of fit, although they
are not mutually exclusive. First-order fit is
simple consistency between each activity (func-
tion) and the overall strategy. Vanguard, for
example, aligns all activities with its low-cost
strategy. It minimizes portfolio turnover and
does not need highly compensated money
managers. The company distributes its

funds

directly, avoiding commissions to brokers. It
also limits advertising, relying instead on pub-
lic relations and word-of-mouth recommenda-
tions. Vanguard ties its employees’ bonuses to
cost savings.

Consistency ensures that the competitive ad-
vantages of activities cumulate and do not
erode or cancel themselves out. It makes the
strategy easier to communicate to customers,
employees, and shareholders, and improves
implementation through single-mindedness in
the corporation.

Second-order fit occurs when activities are
reinforcing. Neutrogena, for example, mar-
kets to upscale hotels eager to offer their
guests a soap recommended by dermatolo-
gists. Hotels grant Neutrogena the privilege
of using its customary packaging while requir-
ing other soaps to feature the hotel’s name.
Once guests have tried Neutrogena in a lux-
ury hotel, they are more likely to purchase it
at the drugstore or ask their doctor about it.
Thus Neutrogena’s medical and hotel market-
ing activities reinforce one another, lowering
total marketing costs.

In another example, Bic Corporation sells a
narrow line of standard, low-priced pens to vir-
tually all major customer markets (retail, com-
mercial, promotional, and giveaway) through
virtually all available channels. As with any
variety-based positioning serving a broad
group of customers, Bic emphasizes a common
need (low price for an acceptable pen) and
uses marketing approaches with a broad reach
(a large sales force and heavy television adver-
tising). Bic gains the benefits of consistency
across nearly all activities, including product
design that emphasizes ease of manufacturing,
plants configured for low cost, aggressive
purchasing to minimize material costs, and

december 1996 page 11
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Explanatory
catalogues,
informative
displays and

labels

Se
by

Ease of
transport and

assembly

Se
by

“Knock-down”
kit packaging

Wide variety
with ease of

manufacturing

Mapping Act
Activity-system maps, such
company’s strategic positio
activities designed to delive

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

in-house parts production whenever the
economics dictate.

Yet Bic goes beyond simple consistency be-
cause its activities are reinforcing. For example,
the company uses point-of-sale displays and
frequent packaging changes to stimulate im-
pulse buying. To handle point-of-sale tasks, a
company needs a large sales force. Bic’s is the
largest in its industry, and it handles point-of-
sale activities better than its rivals do. More-
over, the combination of point-of-sale activity,
heavy television advertising, and packaging
changes yields far more impulse buying than
any activity in isolation could.

Third-order fit goes beyond activity rein-
forcement to what I call optimization of effort.
The Gap, a retailer of casual clothes, considers
product availability in its stores a critical ele-
ment of its strategy. The Gap could keep prod-

ucts either by holding store inventory or by re-
stocking from warehouses. The Gap has
optimized its effort across these activities by
restocking its selection of basic clothing almost
daily out of three warehouses, thereby mini-
mizing the need to carry large in-store invento-
ries. The emphasis is on restocking because the
Gap’s merchandising strategy sticks to basic
items in relatively few colors. While compara-
ble retailers achieve turns of three to four
times per year, the Gap turns its

inventory

seven and a half times per year. Rapid restock-
ing, moreover, reduces the cost of implement-
ing the Gap’s short model cycle, which is six to
eight weeks long.3

Coordination and information exchange
across activities to eliminate redundancy and
minimize wasted effort are the most basic
types of effort optimization. But there are

lf-transport
customers

Limited
customer
service

Self-selection
by customers

Modular
furniture
design

Low
manufacturing

cost

Suburban

locations

with ample
parking

High-traffic
store layout More

impulse
buying

lf-assembly
customers

Limited sales
staffing

Increased
likelihood of

future
purchase

In-house
design focused

on cost of
manufacturing

Ample
inventory
on site

Most
items in

inventory

Year-round
stocking

100%
sourcing from

long-term
suppliers

ivity Systems
as this one for Ikea, show how a
n is contained in a set of tailored
r it. In companies with a clear

strategic position, a number of higher-order strategic themes (in
dark grey) can be identified and implemented through clusters of
tightly linked activities (in light grey).

december 1996 page 12
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Very
expe

passed
clie

Dir
distrib

Employee
bonuses
tied to

cost savings

No
broker-dealer
relationships

No
commissions
to brokers or
distributors

Vanguard’s A
Activity-system maps can b
strengthening strategic fit. A
guide the process. First, is
overall positioning – the va
and the type of customers a

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

higher levels as well. Product design choices,
for example, can eliminate the need for after-
sale service or make it possible for customers
to perform service activities themselves. Simi-
larly, coordination with suppliers or distribu-
tion channels can eliminate the need for some
in-house activities, such as end-user training.

In all three types of fit, the whole matters
more than any individual part. Competitive ad-
vantage grows out of the entire system of activi-
ties. The fit among activities substantially re-
duces cost or increases differentiation. Beyond
that, the competitive value of individual activi-
ties—or the associated skills, competencies, or
resources—cannot be decoupled from the sys-
tem or the strategy. Thus in competitive com-
panies it can be misleading to explain success
by specifying individual strengths, core compe-
tencies, or critical resources. The list of

strengths cuts across many functions, and one
strength blends into others. It is more useful to
think in terms of themes that pervade many
activities, such as low cost, a particular notion
of customer service, or a particular conception
of the value delivered. These themes are em-
bodied in nests of tightly linked activities.

Fit and sustainability. Strategic fit among
many activities is fundamental not only to
competitive advantage but also to the sus-
tainability of that advantage. It is harder for
a rival to match an array of interlocked ac-
tivities than it is merely to imitate a particu-
lar sales-force approach, match a process
technology, or replicate a set of product fea-
tures. Positions built on systems of activities
are far more sustainable than those built on
individual activities.

Consider this simple exercise. The probabil-

Wary of
small growth

funds

low
nses
on to
nt

A broad array
of mutual funds
excluding some
fund categories

Strict cost
control

Efficient investment
management approach

offering good, consistent
performance

ect
ution

Straightforward
client communication

and education

Limited
international
funds due to
volatility and

high costs

Use of
redemption

fees to
discourage

trading

No marketing
changes

No-loads

Only three
retail

locations

In-house
management
for standard

funds

Limited
advertising

budget

Very low rate
of trading

No first-class
travel for
executives

Emphasis
on bonds
and equity
index funds

On-line
information

access

Shareholder
education
cautioning
about risk

Long-term
investment

encouraged

Vanguard
actively

spreads its
philosophy

Reliance
on word
of mouth

ctivity System
e useful for examining and
set of basic questions should

each activity consistent with the
rieties produced, the needs served,
ccessed? Ask those responsible for

each activity to identify how other activities within the company
improve or detract from their performance. Second, are there
ways to strengthen how activities and groups of activities
reinforce one another? Finally, could changes in one activity
eliminate the need to perform others?

december 1996 page 13
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

No
assig

Le
p
g
g

Frequent,
reliable

departures

Flexible
union

contracts

High
compensation
of employees

Southwest A

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

ity that competitors can match any activity is
often less than one. The probabilities then
quickly compound to make matching the en-
tire system highly unlikely (.9 x .9 = .81; .9 x .9 x
.9 x .9 = .66, and so on). Existing companies
that try to reposition or straddle will be forced
to reconfigure many activities. And even new
entrants, though they do not confront the
trade-offs facing established rivals, still face for-
midable barriers to imitation.

The more a company’s positioning rests on
activity systems with second- and third-order
fit, the more sustainable its advantage will be.
Such systems, by their very nature, are usually
difficult to untangle from outside the com-
pany and therefore hard to imitate. And even
if rivals can identify the relevant interconnec-
tions, they will have difficulty replicating
them. Achieving fit is difficult because it re-

quires the integration of decisions and actions
across many independent subunits.

A competitor seeking to match an activity
system gains little by imitating only some
activities and not matching the whole. Per-
formance does not improve; it can decline.
Recall Continental Lite’s disastrous attempt
to imitate Southwest.

Finally, fit among a company’s activities cre-
ates pressures and incentives to improve opera-
tional effectiveness, which makes imitation
even harder. Fit means that poor performance
in one activity will degrade the performance in
others, so that weaknesses are exposed and
more prone to get attention. Conversely, im-
provements in one activity will pay dividends
in others. Companies with strong fit among
their activities are rarely inviting targets. Their
superiority in strategy and in execution only

No meals

seat
nments

Limited
passenger

service

an, highly
roductive
round and
ate crews

Very low
ticket prices

Short-haul,
point-to-point

routes between
midsize cities

and secondary
airports

High
aircraft

utilization

No baggage
transfers

No
connections
with other
airlines

15-minute
gate

turnarounds

High level
of employee

stock
ownership

Limited use
of travel
agents

Automatic
ticketing
machines

Standardized
fleet of 737

aircraft

”Southwest,
the low-fare

airline”

irlines’ Activity System

december 1996 page 14
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Alternative Views of

The Implicit Strategy Model of the

Past Decade

•

One ideal competitive position in
the industry

•

Benchmarking of all activities and
achieving best practice

•

Aggressive outsourcing and part-
nering to gain efficiencies

•

Advantages rest on a few key suc-
cess factors, critical resources, core
competencies

•

Flexibility and rapid responses to a
competitive and market changes

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

compounds their advantages and raises the
hurdle for imitators.

When activities complement one another, ri-
vals will get little benefit from imitation unless
they successfully match the whole system.
Such situations tend to promote winner-take-
all competition. The company that builds the
best activity system—Toys R Us, for instance—
wins, while rivals with similar strategies—
Child World and Lionel Leisure—fall behind.
Thus finding a new strategic position is often
preferable to being the second or third imita-
tor of an occupied position.

The most viable positions are those whose
activity systems are incompatible because of
tradeoffs. Strategic positioning sets the trade-
off rules that define how individual activities
will be configured and integrated. Seeing strat-
egy in terms of activity systems only makes it
clearer why organizational structure, systems,
and processes need to be strategy-specific.
Tailoring organization to strategy, in turn,
makes complementarities more achievable and
contributes to sustainability.

One implication is that strategic positions
should have a horizon of a decade or more,
not of a single planning cycle. Continuity fos-
ters improvements in individual activities
and the fit across activities, allowing an orga-
nization to build unique capabilities and
skills tailored to its strategy. Continuity also
reinforces a company’s identity.

Conversely, frequent shifts in positioning
are costly. Not only must a company reconfig-
ure individual activities, but it must also re-
align entire systems. Some activities may

never catch up to the vacillating strategy. The
inevitable result of frequent shifts in strategy,
or of failure to choose a distinct position in
the first place, is “me-too” or hedged activity
configurations, inconsistencies across func-
tions, and organizational dissonance.

What is strategy? We can now complete the
answer to this question. Strategy is creating fit
among a company’s activities. The success of a
strategy depends on doing many things well—
not just a few—and integrating among them.
If there is no fit among activities, there is no
distinctive strategy and little sustainability.
Management reverts to the simpler task of
overseeing independent functions, and opera-
tional effectiveness determines an organiza-
tion’s relative performance.

V. Rediscovering Strategy
The Failure to Choose. Why do so many com-
panies fail to have a strategy? Why do manag-
ers avoid making strategic choices? Or, having
made them in the past, why do managers so
often let strategies decay and blur?

Commonly, the threats to strategy are seen
to emanate from outside a company because
of changes in technology or the behavior of
competitors. Although external changes can be
the problem, the greater threat to strategy
often comes from within. A sound strategy is
undermined by a misguided view of competi-
tion, by organizational failures, and, especially,
by the desire to grow.

Managers have become confused about the
necessity of making choices. When many com-
panies operate far from the productivity fron-
tier, trade-offs appear unnecessary. It can seem
that a well-run company should be able to beat
its ineffective rivals on all dimensions simulta-
neously. Taught by popular management
thinkers that they do not have to make trade-
offs, managers have acquired a macho sense
that to do so is a sign of weakness.

Unnerved by forecasts of hypercompetition,
managers increase its likelihood by imitating
everything about their competitors. Exhorted
to think in terms of revolution, managers
chase every new technology for its own sake.

The pursuit of operational effectiveness is
seductive because it is concrete and actionable.
Over the past decade, managers have been
under increasing pressure to deliver tangible,
measurable performance improvements. Pro-
grams in operational effectiveness produce re-

Strategy

ll

Sustainable Competitive Advantage

• Unique competitive position for the
company

• Activities tailored to strategy
• Clear trade-offs and choices vis-à-vis

competitors
• Competitive advantage arises from

fit across activities
• Sustainability comes from the ac-

tivity system, not the parts
• Operational effectiveness a

given

december 1996 page 15
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Reconnecting with S

Most companies owe their initial succ
a unique strategic position involving
trade-offs. Activities once were aligne
that position. The passage of time and
pressures of growth, however, led to c
promises that were, at first, almost im
ceptible. Through a succession of incr
tal changes that each seemed sensible
time, many established companies ha
compromised their way to homogene
with their rivals.

The issue here is not with the comp
whose historical position is no longer
their challenge is to start over, just a
new entrant would. At issue is a far m
common phenomenon: the establish
company achieving mediocre returns
lacking a clear strategy. Through incre
tal additions of product varieties, incr
tal efforts to serve new customer gro
and emulation of rivals’ activities, the
ing company loses its clear competi
position. Typically, the company has

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

assuring progress, although superior profitabil-
ity may remain elusive. Business publications
and consultants flood the market with infor-
mation about what other companies are doing,
reinforcing the best-practice mentality. Caught
up in the race for operational effectiveness,
many managers simply do not understand the
need to have a strategy.

Companies avoid or blur strategic choices for
other reasons as well. Conventional wisdom
within an industry is often strong, homogeniz-
ing competition. Some managers mistake “cus-
tomer focus” to mean they must serve all cus-
tomer needs or respond to every request from
distribution channels. Others cite the desire to
preserve flexibility.

Organizational realities also work against
strategy. Trade-offs are frightening, and mak-
ing no choice is sometimes preferred to risk-
ing blame for a bad choice. Companies imitate
one another in a type of herd behavior, each
assuming rivals know something they do not.
Newly empowered employees, who are urged
to seek every possible source of improve-
ment, often lack a vision of the whole and
the perspective to recognize trade-offs. The
failure to choose sometimes comes down to

the reluctance to disappoint valued managers
or employees.

The Growth Trap. Among all other influ-
ences, the desire to grow has perhaps the
most perverse effect on strategy. Trade-offs
and limits appear to constrain growth. Serv-
ing one group of customers and excluding
others, for instance, places a real or imag-
ined limit on revenue growth. Broadly tar-
geted strategies emphasizing low price result
in lost sales with customers sensitive to fea-
tures or service. Differentiators lose sales to
price-sensitive customers.

Managers are constantly tempted to take in-
cremental steps that surpass those limits but
blur a company’s strategic position. Eventually,
pressures to grow or apparent saturation of the
target market lead managers to broaden the
position by extending product lines, adding
new features, imitating competitors’ popular
services, matching processes, and even making
acquisitions. For years, Maytag Corporation’s
success was based on its focus on reliable, dura-
ble washers and dryers, later extended to include
dishwashers. However, conventional wisdom
emerging within the industry supported the
notion of selling a full line of products. Con-

trategy
ess to
clear
d with
the

om-
per-
emen-
at the
ve
ity

anies
viable;
s a
ore
ed
and
men-

emen-
ups,
exist-
tive

matched many of its competitors’ offerings
and practices and attempts to sell to most
customer groups.

A number of approaches can help a com-
pany reconnect with strategy. The first is a
careful look at what it already does. Within
most well-established companies is a core of
uniqueness. It is identified by answering
questions such as the following:

• Which of our product or service variet-
ies are the most distinctive?

• Which of our product or service variet-
ies are the most profitable?

• Which of our customers are the most
satisfied?

• Which customers, channels, or purchase
occasions are the most profitable?

• Which of the activities in our value chain
are the most different and effective?

Around this core of uniqueness are en-
crustations added incrementally over time.
Like barnacles, they must be removed to re-
veal the underlying strategic positioning. A

small percentage of varieties or customers
may well account for most of a company’s
sales and especially its profits. The chal-
lenge, then, is to refocus on the unique
core and realign the company’s activities
with it. Customers and product varieties at
the periphery can be sold or allowed
through inattention or price increases to
fade away.

A company’s history can also be instruc-
tive. What was the vision of the founder?
What were the products and customers that
made the company? Looking backward, one
can reexamine the original strategy to see if
it is still valid. Can the historical positioning
be implemented in a modern way, one con-
sistent with today’s technologies and prac-
tices? This sort of thinking may lead to a
commitment to renew the strategy and may
challenge the organization to recover its dis-
tinctiveness. Such a challenge can be galva-
nizing and can instill the confidence to
make the needed trade-offs.

december 1996 page 16
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

Emerging Industries

Developing a strategy in a newly
emerging industry or in a business un
dergoing revolutionary technological
changes is a daunting proposition. In
such cases, managers face a high leve
of uncertainty about the needs of cus
tomers, the products and services tha
will prove to be the most desired, and
the best configuration of activities an
technologies to deliver them. Because
of all this uncertainty, imitation and
hedging are rampant: unable to risk
being wrong or left behind, companie
match all features, offer all new ser-
vices, and explore all technologies.

During such periods in an industry’s
development, its basic productivity fron
tier is being established or reestablishe
Explosive growth can make such times
profitable for many companies, but pro
its will be temporary because imitation
and strategic convergence will ultimate
destroy industry profitability. The comp
nies that are enduringly successful will b
those that begin as early as possible to
define and embody in their activities a

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

cerned with slow industry growth and competi-
tion from broad-line appliance makers, Maytag
was pressured by dealers and encouraged by
customers to extend its line. Maytag expanded
into refrigerators and cooking products under
the Maytag brand and acquired other brands—
Jenn-Air, Hardwick Stove, Hoover, Admiral,
and Magic Chef—with disparate positions.
Maytag has grown substantially from $684 mil-
lion in 1985 to a peak of $3.4 billion in 1994,
but return on sales has declined from 8% to
12% in the 1970s and 1980s to an average of
less than 1% between 1989 and 1995. Cost
cutting will improve this performance, but
laundry and dishwasher products still anchor
Maytag’s profitability.

Neutrogena may have fallen into the same
trap. In the early 1990s, its U.S. distribution
broadened to include mass merchandisers
such as Wal-Mart Stores. Under the Neutro-
gena name, the company expanded into a wide
variety of products—eye-makeup remover and
shampoo, for example—in which it was not

unique and which diluted its image, and it
began turning to price promotions.

Compromises and inconsistencies in the pur-
suit of growth will erode the competitive advan-
tage a company had with its original varieties
or target customers. Attempts to compete in
several ways at once create confusion and un-
dermine organizational motivation and focus.
Profits fall, but more revenue is seen as the an-
swer. Managers are unable to make choices, so
the company embarks on a new round of broad-
ening and compromises. Often, rivals continue
to match each other until desperation breaks
the cycle, resulting in a merger or downsizing
to the original positioning.

Profitable Growth. Many companies, after a
decade of restructuring and cost-cutting, are
turning their attention to growth. Too often,
efforts to grow blur uniqueness, create com-
promises, reduce fit, and ultimately undermine
competitive advantage. In fact, the growth im-
perative is hazardous to strategy.

What approaches to growth preserve and re-
inforce strategy? Broadly, the prescription is to
concentrate on deepening a strategic position
rather than broadening and compromising it.
One approach is to look for extensions of the
strategy that leverage the existing activity sys-
tem by offering features or services that rivals
would find impossible or costly to match on a
stand-alone basis. In other words, managers
can ask themselves which activities, features,
or forms of competition are feasible or less
costly to them because of complementary ac-
tivities that their company performs.

Deepening a position involves making the
company’s activities more distinctive, strength-
ening fit, and communicating the strategy better
to those customers who should value it. But
many companies succumb to the temptation to
chase “easy” growth by adding hot features,
products, or services without screening them or
adapting them to their strategy. Or they target
new customers or markets in which the com-
pany has little special to offer. A company can
often grow faster—and far more profitably—by
better penetrating needs and varieties where it is
distinctive than by slugging it out in potentially
higher growth arenas in which the company
lacks uniqueness. Carmike, now the largest the-
ater chain in the United States, owes its rapid
growth to its disciplined concentration on small
markets. The company quickly sells any big-city
theaters that come to it as part of an acquisition.

and Technologies

–

l
–
t

d

s

–

d.

f-

ly
a-
e

unique competitive position. A period of
imitation may be inevitable in emerging
industries, but that period reflects the
level of uncertainty rather than a desired
state of affairs.

In high-tech industries, this imitation
phase often continues much longer
than it should. Enraptured by techno-
logical change itself, companies pack
more features—most of which are
never used—into their products while
slashing prices across the board. Rarely
are trade-offs even considered. The
drive for growth to satisfy market pres-
sures leads companies into every prod-
uct area. Although a few companies
with fundamental advantages prosper,
the majority are doomed to a rat race
no one can win.

Ironically, the popular business
press, focused on hot, emerging indus-
tries, is prone to presenting these spe-
cial cases as proof that we have entered
a new era of competition in which
none of the old rules are valid. In fact,
the opposite is true.

december 1996 page 17
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

Globalization often allows growth that is
consistent with strategy, opening up larger
markets for a focused strategy. Unlike broad-
ening domestically, expanding globally is
likely to leverage and reinforce a company’s
unique position and identity.

Companies seeking growth through broad-
ening within their industry can best contain
the risks to strategy by creating stand-alone
units, each with its own brand name and tai-
lored activities. Maytag has clearly struggled
with this issue. On the one hand, it has orga-
nized its premium and value brands into sepa-
rate units with different strategic positions. On
the other, it has created an umbrella appliance
company for all its brands to gain critical mass.
With shared design, manufacturing, distribu-
tion, and customer service, it will be hard to
avoid homogenization. If a given business unit
attempts to compete with different positions
for different products or customers, avoiding
compromise is nearly impossible.

The Role of Leadership. The challenge of de-
veloping or reestablishing a clear strategy is
often primarily an organizational one and de-
pends on leadership. With so many forces at
work against making choices and tradeoffs in
organizations, a clear intellectual framework
to guide strategy is a necessary counterweight.
Moreover, strong leaders willing to make
choices are essential.

In many companies, leadership has degen-
erated into orchestrating operational improve-
ments and making deals. But the leader’s role
is broader and far more important. General
management is more than the stewardship of
individual functions. Its core is strategy: defining
and communicating the company’s unique
position, making trade-offs, and forging fit
among activities. The leader must provide the
discipline to decide which industry changes
and customer needs the company will re-
spond to, while avoiding organizational dis-
tractions and maintaining the company’s
distinctiveness. Managers at lower levels lack
the perspective and the confidence to main-
tain a strategy. There will be constant pres-
sures to compromise, relax trade-offs, and
emulate rivals. One of the leader’s jobs is to
teach others in the organization about
strategy—and to say no.

Strategy renders choices about what not to
do as important as choices about what to do.
Indeed, setting limits is another function of

leadership. Deciding which target group of cus-
tomers, varieties, and needs the company
should serve is fundamental to developing a
strategy. But so is deciding not to serve other
customers or needs and not to offer certain
features or services. Thus strategy requires
constant discipline and clear communication.
Indeed, one of the most important functions
of an explicit, communicated strategy is to
guide employees in making choices that arise
because of trade-offs in their individual activi-
ties and in day-to-day decisions.

Improving operational effectiveness is a nec-
essary part of management, but it is not strategy.
In confusing the two, managers have uninten-
tionally backed into a way of thinking about
competition that is driving many industries to-
ward competitive convergence, which is in no
one’s best interest and is not inevitable.

Managers must clearly distinguish opera-
tional effectiveness from strategy. Both are es-
sential, but the two agendas are different.

The operational agenda involves continual
improvement everywhere there are no trade-
offs. Failure to do this creates vulnerability
even for companies with a good strategy. The
operational agenda is the proper place for con-
stant change, flexibility, and relentless efforts
to achieve best practice. In contrast, the strate-
gic agenda is the right place for defining a
unique position, making clear trade-offs, and
tightening fit. It involves the continual search
for ways to reinforce and extend the com-
pany’s position. The strategic agenda demands
discipline and continuity; its enemies are
distraction and compromise.

Strategic continuity does not imply a static
view of competition. A company must continu-
ally improve its operational effectiveness and
actively try to shift the productivity frontier; at
the same time, there needs to be ongoing ef-
fort to extend its uniqueness while strengthen-
ing the fit among its activities. Strategic conti-
nuity, in fact, should make an organization’s
continual improvement more effective.

A company may have to change its strategy
if there are major structural changes in its in-
dustry. In fact, new strategic positions often
arise because of industry changes, and new
entrants unencumbered by history often can
exploit them more easily. However, a com-
pany’s choice of a new position must be
driven by the ability to find new trade-offs
and leverage a new system of complemen-

december 1996 page 18
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

What Is Strategy?

harvard business review • november–

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only b

tary activities into a sustainable advantage.

1. I first described the concept of activities and its
use in understanding competitive advantage in
Competitive Advantage (New York: The Free
Press, 1985). The ideas in this article build on
and extend that thinking.
2. Paul Milgrom and John Roberts have begun
to explore the economics of systems of comple-
mentary functions, activities, and functions.
Their focus is on the emergence of “modern
manufacturing” as a new set of complemen-
tary activities, on the tendency of companies
to react to external changes with coherent
bundles of internal responses, and on the
need for central coordination—a strategy—to
align functional managers. In the latter case,
they model what has long been a bedrock princi-
ple of strategy. See Paul Milgrom and John Rob-
erts, “The Economics of Modern Manufactur-
ing: Technology, Strategy, and Organization,”

American Economic Review 80 (1990): 511–528;
Paul Milgrom, Yingyi Qian, and John Roberts,
“Complementarities, Momentum, and Evolu-
tion of Modern Manufacturing,” American
Economic Review 81 (1991) 84–88; and Paul
Milgrom and John Roberts, “Complementari-
ties and Fit: Strategy, Structure, and Organi-
zational Changes in Manufacturing,” Journal
of Accounting and Economics, vol. 19
(March–May 1995): 179–208.
3. Material on retail strategies is drawn in part
from Jan Rivkin, “The Rise of Retail Category
Killers,” unpublished working paper, January
1995. Nicolaj Siggelkow prepared the case study
on the Gap.

Reprint 96608
To order, see the next page
or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500
or go to www.hbr.org

december 1996 page 19
y LINTING BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/relay.jhtml?name=itemdetail&referral=4320&id=96608

http://www.hbr.org

What Is Strategy?

To Order

For

Harvard Business Review

reprints and
subscriptions, call 800-988-0886 or
617-783-7500. Go to www.hbr.org

For customized and quantity orders of

Harvard Business Review

article reprints,
call 617-783-7626, or e-mail
customizations@hbsp.harvard.edu

Further Reading

For the exclusive use of L. BING, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only by LINTING

A R T I C L E S
Clusters and the New Economics of
Competition
by Michael E. Porter
Harvard Business Review
November–December 1998
Product no. 98609

This article focuses on operational effective-
ness and the conditions that create it. In the-
ory, location should no longer be a source of
competitive advantage. Open global markets,
rapid transportation, and high-speed com-
munications should allow any company to
source any thing from any place at any time.
In practice, location remains central to com-
petition. This is true because companies in a
particular field, along with suppliers and other
related businesses, cluster in geographic con-
centrations where virtually all the important
information and technology in the field is
readily available.

How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy
by Michael E. Porter
Harvard Business Review
March–April 1979
Product no. 79208

In this McKinsey Award–winning article, Porter
discusses factors that determine the nature of
competition. Among them: rivals, the eco-
nomics of particular industries, new entrants,
the bargaining power of customers and sup-
pliers, and the threat of substitute services or
products. A strategic plan of action based on
such factors might include: positioning the
company so that its capabilities provide the
best defense against competitive forces, influ-
encing the balance of forces through strategic
moves, and anticipating shifts in the factors
underlying the competitive forces. Strategic
positioning requires looking both within the
company and at external factors when mak-
ing these decisions; in some cases, it means
choosing what not to do.

From Competitive Advantage to
Corporate Strategy
by Michael E. Porter
Harvard Business Review
May–June 1987
Product no. 87307

Despite some startling success stories,
diversification—whether through acquisi-
tion, joint venture, or start-up—has not typ-
ically brought the competitive advantages
or the profitability sought by executives.
Successful diversification strategies rely on
transferring skills and sharing activities to
capture the benefits of existing relation-
ships among business units. Therefore, cor-
porate leaders must examine closely any
acquisition candidate’s “fit” with the parent
company’s existing businesses.

B O O K
On Competition
by Michael E. Porter
Harvard Business School Press
1998
Product no. 7951

In this collection of articles on competition,
Porter addresses the core concepts of compe-
tition and strategy, the role of location in com-
petition, and the interrelation of competition
and social progress. Important business activi-
ties such as staking out and maintaining a dis-
tinctive competitive position in order to profit
and grow, and the continual improvement of
productivity in order to achieve prosperity, are
all intimately related to strategic positioning.

page 20
BING in BUS 109-030 taught by Paul Kirwan, University of California – Riverside from Jan 2020 to Mar 2020.

http://www.hbr.org

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/relay.jhtml?name=itemdetail&referral=4320&id=98609

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/relay.jhtml?name=itemdetail&referral=4320&id=98609

mailto:customizations@hbsp.harvard.edu

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/relay.jhtml?name=itemdetail&referral=4320&id=79208

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/relay.jhtml?name=itemdetail&referral=4320&id=87307

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/relay.jhtml?name=itemdetail&referral=4320&id=87307

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/relay.jhtml?name=itemdetail&referral=4320&id=7951