Inside the Competitor’s Mindset

During his experience at McKinsey, John Horn made the observation that many executives consider their competitors to be unpredictable and irrational. At issue: the difficulty in taking on their point of view and in perceiving as judicious decisions that they themselves see as being harmful to the market. And yet, through the allocation of dedicated resources and by focusing their intelligence efforts on key points, numerous companies succeed in improving their anticipation of their competitors’ behavior. John Horn provides extensive advice on the ways of achieving this: profiles to be assembled within our team, a process for investigating and refining our predictions, exercises that help take on our competitors’ logic. He relies in particular on the study of professions seemingly far removed from the corporate world, but which too face the difficult task of decoding a situation with only fragmented information on their topic of study: archaeologists, paleontologists, detectives and neonatal nurses. At once a practical and inspiring work, which provides tips to stay a step ahead in one’s market.