Sustaining your stream of economic profits depends on there being certain barriers to entry and imitation to reduce competitive pressures. You need a thorough strategic analysis that identifies and analyzes your direct competitors to forecast your future cash flows and calculate an expected market value for your business.

Professors Jared Harris and Michael Lenox explore one of the four foundational analytical tools to help any organization future-proof its strategy: competitor analysis.

Competitor analysis can provide invaluable insights into the longer-term sustainability of your own firm’s competitive advantage, as well as how your rivals may respond to specific strategic decisions and actions you take further down the line.

- Professors Jared Harris & Michael Lenox

The Competitor Analysis Tool is a critical starting point for thinking about the competitive dynamics in your industry and how other firms compete for market share.

This step-by-step framework empowers you to:

  • Assess your own competitive advantage
  • Predict how your competitors might respond to your strategic actions
  • Spot opportunities to influence rivals’ behaviors to your advantage
  • Make better strategic decisions

Read the full article on Ideas to Action for details on each step of the analysis.

This article is excerpted from Executive Education & Lifelong Learning’s Future-Proof Your Strategy: Four Essential Tools whitepaper. Download the full whitepaper to delve into all four strategy analysis tools with Darden’s world-renowned faculty experts.


Learn more with these Darden experts in our self-paced, online Certificate in Business Strategy program.