If You're in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!

When Yellow Tail wines launched in 2001, they battled 6,500 other wineries for a share of the American market. By 2007, Yellow Tail sales in the United States exceeded the sales of all French wineries combined. How did this new business enter such a crowded market and succeed?

If You're in a Dogfight, Become a Cat! explains how businesses such as Yellow Tail survive and thrive in industries embroiled in "dogfights"—intense competition among established companies for a small piece of the market. Leonard Sherman, a longtime business consultant and faculty member at Columbia Business School, has developed a three-part strategy based on years of consulting for such companies as Audi, Toyota, and United Technologies. His advice: compete on different terms to attract new customers. FedEx, Apple, Southwest Airlines, and Starbucks have thrived as cats by differentiating their businesses, aligning their goals and practices, and continuously innovating their products. Rather than compete head-on with other PC manufacturers, Apple introduced a new category of tablet devices to unlock latent demand for mobile computing. Yellow Tail turned beer- and liquor-lovers on to casual, inexpensive, drinkable wines through youthful packaging. In this book, managers of companies big and small encounter dozens of model strategies for product design and forward-thinking organization that have resulted in real long-term, profitable growth.