The New Market Leaders: Who's Winning and How in the Battle for Customers

In the decade since Fred Wiersema coauthored the #1 bestseller The Discipline of Market Leaders, a momentous shift has occured. We have entered an age of customer scarcity--an age in which exciting, often unorthodox companies are revolutionizing the global marketplace. In this path-cutting work, Wiersema provides new benchmarks for ranking businesses in this new economy and reveals the strategies that set winning companies apart.

After tracking 5,000 companies worldwide for over six years, Wiersema discovered that just a few hundred of these of these exert tremendous influence on the new economy. Here, he explains why traditional measures of competitive prowess no longer apply and, using new yardsticks, identifies today's 100 most influential businesses. With practical strategies for managers and investors, Wiersema then shows how to recognize and emulate these dynamic new market leaders.

The author starts out by establishing the evaluation criteria that got a company into the study and he coins two new terms to describe these criteria - sales growth index and market value index (details of these terms on pages 7-13 of the book).

The author then summarizes the industries in which all these companies fall under - Consumer Products, Media and Entertainment, Heavy Industry, Technology Products, Technology Services, Financial Services, and Other Industries (healthcare, consumer services, and other).

A whole chapter is then dedicated to why we are feeling a scarcity of customers. The author names the reasons for this sitaution (new realities) - competitors proliferate, all secrets are open secrets, innovation is universal, information overwhelmes and depreciates, easy growth makes hard times, customers have less time than ever. He does a good job of justifying these obvious reasons with some supporting data.

So, if the new realities are that harsh, how are the market leaders managing? The author describes FOUR STRATEGIES that seem to work for these market leaders in overcoming the obvious difficulties in these days of customer scarcity. The four strategies being -

1. being the best and showing it
2. the customers who can make or break you
3. making sure customers 'get it'
4. outsized ambition.

To support why the market leaders have adopted these strategies, the author then labels all customers as falling into four categories and spends 4 chapters explaining how to work each of these groups

1. Searchers (eager to change and self-reliant)
2. Collaborators (eager to change and ready for help)
3. Streamliners (seeking stability and self-reliant)
4. Delegators (seeking stability and ready for help)

The rest of the book consists of some case studies to reinforce the above mentioned concepts and ideas. Overall, a simple book to read and valuable information considering the source data (the top 5,000 companies in the world). The criteria that the author used to come up with this list does seem reasonable. The best part of the book is that this book was originally written before the dot com bubble burst. If the author's claims are true, the companies short-listed by using his criteria survived the burst (except a small percentage attributable to other factors)! We don't know if the author's claims are true that his list didn't change much (as the book was published after the burst even though he wrote it before the burst). But if they are true, it is valuable information for any business that plans on emerging from this gloomy economy as one of the market leaders. The ideas presented meet the common sense test, so we are following these ideas quite a bit in our new company to achieve success.

The book is definitely worthwhile to look at. There are so many books in this niche (business help) that it can be overwhelming for anyone to make any sense out of this glut. But this book is really such a quick read and the concepts are so simple and small in number that I think the 2-3 hours time spent is time well spent. Good luck and I hope you get something good out of this book!


Not a lot of meat   December 19, 2001
Robert Kelly (Santee, CA USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I loved Discipline of Market Leaders. As a business owner I read and listen to a lot of books and Discipline of Market leaders was great. Unfortunately this follow up book by only one of the authors didn't have much to offer. Lots and lots of words but not much being said. There are a few nuggets of knowledge, as there are with most books, but unlike the Discipline of Market leaders that I went through 3 times and even took notes while going through it, this new book was just short of a waste of time. Wish I could say it was better...


Tiny chunks of meat in a big pot   December 7, 2001
Aaron Ades (Ft Collins, CO United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book did have a few interesting observations about customers, however it was tedious wading through the pages and pages of descriptions, examples and flowerly language. It could have and should have been about 3/4 shorter. Good cure for insomnia.


Good book, unfortunately the market moves too fast   November 22, 2001
Wiersema's book is based on a research theory that if you identify leading companies you should be able to extract lessons that should be applicable to other companies. This approach is behind works such as "Pursuit of Excellence" and "Built to Last". Unfortunately for Wiersema he conducted his research at the peak of the economic boom of the 1990's. This makes many of Wiesema's conclusions ring hollow in the face of weak customer demand, increasing competition and an uncertain future.

Wiersema's earlier book on Value Disciplines contributed early on to a move to core competency. This book represents an interesting academic exercise as to what was market leading in the 90's and less so on how to address current market realities and challenges.