Book Reviews

Competing Against Time:
How Time-Based Competition Is Reshaping Global Markets

By George Stalk and Thomas Hout

Reviewed by Steve Buchwald, CIRM

The war cry of the '90s seems to be TIME! Time is the cutting edge of competitive strategy and in today's fast paced society is synonymous with money. For this reason any good book about time is mandatory reading.

This book is based on ten years of research. The authors use examples from companies such as Federal Express, Ford, Milliken, Honda, Deere, Toyota, Sun Microsystems, Wal-Mart, Citicorp, Harley-Davidson, and Mitsubishi, that have successfully employed time-based strategies, to demonstrate the incredible pay-offs involved. These companies were not created as success stories -- they worked hard to get there. In some cases these were companies on the road to extinction.

The book was written during the end of the '80s with a copyright date of 1990 and although some of the facts are not current the theory is right on, give customers what they want when they want it, or the competition will. However, too many companies still think that there is a direct trade-off between time, quality, and cost. Nonetheless, this book shows that time-based companies are offering greater varieties of products and services, at lower costs, and with quicker delivery times than their more traditional based competition. In addition, the authors illustrate that by refocusing on time, companies are finding these trade-off assumptions are just not true. More critically, the authors shatter the commonly held belief that customer demand would only marginally improve by expanded product choice and better responsiveness. They show that the actual results have been staggering in the demand for the products or services of a time-based competitor.

This book though is not a book filled with ideas on how to become a time-based competitor. The purpose of this book is to document the power of time as a strategic weapon and to illustrate how other companies have used time as an effective weapon. If you or your company are not yet convinced that time is important then you need to read this book. If, on the other hand, you are already convinced that time is important and you are interested it how to begin the time-based implementation strategy let me suggest another book reviewed in this column one year ago, TIME-BASED COMPETITION - The Next Battle Ground in American Manufacturing, edited by Joseph D. Blackburn. Both books are good reading and as I said earlier essential in today's fast paced world.

Good reading!