Of note

Two takes on Uber and its high-profile, highly controversial tactics. Who’s the bad guy, Uber, Lyft, or the media?

Advanced Competitive Strategies was officially incorporated in February 1992. Please join me with a smile: it’s time to celebrate and reflect upon twenty years of ACS. We will do that here with accumulated facts, acquired wisdom, sincere thanks, and hopes for what’s yet to come.

I get around a bit and I’ve noticed a few things. This isn’t the grand unifying theory of strategy that we all crave. It’s just a few observations as we lurch, slide, dive, bound, stagger, drag, and hop(e) from 2011 to 2012.

Steve Jobs died today. We salute his innovation and his passion for excellence. I also want to ask, when’s the last time we mourned the passing of a business leader?

If we ran a survey asking “are you biased?” we would find no one is. Bias is a characteristic of others, not of ourselves. It’s about you, not me. Which is ironic, and the point.

How can consumers trust companies to make safe products, and to make products safer? An essay on perceived costs, hidden opportunities, level playing fields, “intangibles,” applying brains, and jerking knees.

(Translation: Business War Game in Washington, DC.) We all know we’re in an economic crisis. We all know that we still have to make strategy decisions. And we all know it is a time of opportunity as well as a time of danger. It’s a perfect time for business war gaming.

ACS announces two upcoming workshops about business war-gaming and a forthcoming article about a business war game for the automobile industry. We also invite strategists to participate in a free and fascinating pricing-strategy tournament.

Patent for simulation design. Top Pricer Tournament at conference. Public business war game about the automobile industry. Recommended book.

What would you do if you were the GM CEO? Or Alan Mulally of Ford, Akio Toyoda of Toyota, Tom Purves of BMW, Robert Cosmei of Hyundai, or another industry leader? Would your strategies work? Come participate in an automobile-industry business war game, facilitated by ACS.