Hardball Strategies, 2nd Edition (HBR Article Collection)

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and the competition's turned nasty. Only the toughest and wiliest players prevail. How to compete? This Harvard Business Review Article Collection provides your playbook. A taste of what you'll find: Hardball strategies: Through these killer strategies, you use "extreme" but perfectly legal tactics to topple rivals. Examples include plagiarizing with pride. European-based RyanAir did this by successfully transplanting Southwest's business model (bypassing major airports) overseas. Curveball strategies: These tactics enable you to outfox competitors into doing something dumb they shouldn't have--or not doing something smart they should have. For instance, the new CEO of one Scottish bank imported hard-sell techniques from his years in retailing, including redesigning incentive compensation to drive sales. Spit-and-polish rivals couldn't bring themselves to adopt his scrappy practices and lost market share. Hit rivals with hardballs and curveballs, and you grab market share, fatten your margins, and spur growth. Meanwhile, your competitors can only sweat and squirm.