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Decades ago, a Russian scientist discovered this law of competitive exclusion: No two species can coexist that make their living in the same way. The business world operates in the same way as the animal kingdom. Two enterprises that deal in the same goods and services, in the same territory, under the same conditions, in the same manner, and with the same clientele cannot coexist equally. Eventually, one gains ascendancy over the other. Therefore, market share is a meaningless number unless a competitor defines the market in terms of the boundaries--that is, the differences--that separate it from its rivals. The essence of the contest, as in the natural selection that Charles Darwin observed, lies in extending the boundary of the advantage your differences give you and preventing competitors from doing the same. As a consequence of the advances and retreats of the players in a particular business, seeking to differentiate themselves and wrest competitive advantage, the equilibrium of the market can be upset at any time. Here strategy, which requires the ability to understand the complex web of natural competition, comes into play. Strategy involves the search for a plan of action that will create competitive advantage and compound it. It is all-encompassing in its commitment. A competitor's failure to react to a rival's strategic move can turn existing competitive relationships upside down--quickly. Unlike natural selection, strategic competition compresses time into desperately short periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple letters to the editor are presented in response to articles from previous issues. Titles include "Quality Circles After the Fad," by Edward E. Lawler III and Susan A. Mohrman, "Turnaround for the Public Schools?," by Fred M. Hechinger, from the January-February 1985 issue, and "Yesterday's Accounting Undermines Production," by Robert S. Kaplan, from the July-August 1984 issue.

The letters to the editor refer to articles in previous issues of "Harvard Business Review." "Regulation by Confrontation or Negotiation?" is written by Robert Reich and is in the May-June 1981 issue. "The Roundtable: Getting Results in Washington" is from Kim McQuaid. "When Executives Burn Out" is by Harry Levinson in the May-June 1981 issue, "Sexual Harassment: Some See It...Some Won't" by Eliza G. C. Collins and Timothy B. Blodgett. "Let's Stop Eating Our Seed Corn" is by Lawrence Revsine and is in the January-February 1981 issue.

The article discusses how brinkmanship, or acting unreasonably without predictable outcomes, can bring about business success. The author contends that company managers must persuade their competitors not to exercise their full efforts in acquiring customers and profits. Persuasion depends on emotional and intuitive factors, rather than analysis or deduction. The author believes that cooperating with competitors while maintaining one's own convictions can bring about success. By gaining a competitive advantage in the minds of the competitors, business executives can convert the victory into sales volume, costs, and profits.

Several letters to the editor in response to articles in previous issues including "Gamesmanship With the Guideposts," by Michael A. C. Jensen in the November-December 1966 issue, "Sharpen Your Number Sense," by Roger A. Golde in the July-August 1966 issue, and "Productivity Management," by David Sirota in the September-October 1966 issue are presented.

The author suggests that return-on-investment (ROI) for divisional performance evaluation among U.S. corporations and business enterprises can be misleading because it can provide information that leads to incorrect decisions, motivates division managers to take actions contrary to the best interests of the company, and misleads top management about divisional performance. ROI fails because it uses profit centers that cannot function as such, transfer prices that are not really prices, and investment bases that are not in fact relevant. After analyzing the severe limitations of ROI as the basic system of management control, the authors outline a new approach that is quite workable and far more appropriate to the needs of top management and division managements in multidivisional corporations. The proposed system holds division managers responsible only for what they can control, and is based on a budget of the division's expected contribution to corporate profits for the coming year, on a fixed- and managed-cost budget, and on a capital budget.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to an article about the chemicals company Rohm & Haas in the March 19, 1979 issue.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to an article on brewing company Anheuser-Busch that appeared in the August 7, 1978 issue.

A response by the author is presented to a letter to the editor about his article "The Origin of Strategy," from the November-December 1989 issue.