核心竞争力的研究(英文版)
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Is your core competence a
mirage?
Managers now consider just about
everything a potential competence.
Are you
measurably better, can you sustain the difference,
and does it
matter? Building a core
competence: three options.
KEVIN P. COYNE,
STEPHEN J. D. HALL, AND PATRICIA GORMAN
CLIFFORD
1997 Number 1
Core
competence—the idea that a company can succeed
without a
structural competitive advantage by
becoming the best at a few key
skills or in a
few knowledge areas—has enjoyed enormous
popularity
over the past six years. The
article that introduced the concept
1
has
been one of the most requested reprints in the
Harvard Business
Review's history. Executive
management programs and MBA curricula
routinely devote hours to the subject, and
executives often refer to
their own and
competitors' core competences as key drivers of
strategy.
But despite all the attention
this concept has received, its tangible
impact
on corporate performance has been mixed at best,
as these
statements attest:
one
fails.
2
core competences are hard to
define precisely and are often
discovered
retrospectively. That is, as you experiment, you
define your
3
competences by simply
describing your successes and failures.
talked to [core competence experts] and asked
them to help us
identify our core competences.
But after having them work with our
senior
management, leading them through some group
exercises, we
really had a mess on our hands.
We could not define what was core as
opposed
to noncore, and what was a competence as opposed
to some
process or offering we just did
well.
4
Most managers we talked to were
uncertain as to exactly what
qualifies as a
core competence
Our own observations bear out
these views. Few managers we have
talked to
could claim to have utilized a core competence to
achieve
success in the marketplace, and even
fewer to have built a core
competence from
scratch. Indeed, most were uncertain as to exactly
what qualifies as a core competence.
We
are left with a conundrum. Core competence is
clearly an
important concept, and some
companies seem to be able to make it
work. But
for most, it is like a mirage: something that from
a distance
appears to offer hope in a
hostile environment, but that turns to sand
when approached.
Why do competences seem
so elusive? One reason may be that there
is no
clear basis for identifying them, nor any
established way of
gauging progress toward
them. To address the need for a more
rigorous
approach, we reviewed the literature, assessed
individuals'
experience, and conducted case
studies of companies that had
attempted
(successfully or unsuccessfully) to develop a core
competence. This research produced four
important findings:
competenceis an umbrella
phrase covering two distinct bases of
advantage; certain tests can help predict
whether a competence-led
strategy will be
successful; there are three distinct paths to
developing
a competence, each with its own
benefits and drawbacks; and
sustaining a core
competence requires just as much rigor as
developing one in the first place.
What
are core competences?
While most of the
examples in Hamel and Prahalad's article concerned
knowledge of one or more technologies,
executives have extended the
idea of core
competence to cover many types of skills and
functions,
including process engineering,
production, new product idea
generation, and
even corporate identity. They treat everything as
a
potential competence. One executive
asserted, way I determine
core competences is
that they are those few things that you do
together with the customer that create value.
In contrast, we believe a precise definition
is essential. To mount a
winning competence-
based strategy, it is not enough to rely on broad
generalizations like or
One consumer goods
company with a reputation for marketing
excellence assumed that it was superior in all
aspects of marketing.
Yet it is not
particularly skilled at pricing, is only average
at channel
management, and has made some
costly errors in a string of new
product
failures. Its true competence is much narrower:
demand
stimulation through image-based
advertising. Companies must define
their core
competences with equal precision if they are to
use the
concept to its full advantage.
The
definition must also incorporate the applications
and limits of the
competence. A large regional
bank believed that one of its core
competences
was its ability to process financial transactions
with
tremendous accuracy. It indeed excelled
at cash management, check
processing, and
several similar lines. But it exited the mortgage
servicing business after failing to master the
transaction processing
tasks involved.
We propose a simple definition:
A core competence is a combination of
complementary skills and
knowledge bases
embedded in a group or team that results in the
ability to execute one or more critical
processes to a world-class
standard.
Such
a definition excludes many skills or properties
often cited by
organizations as core
competences. Patents, brands, products, and
technologies do not qualify; neither do broad
management capabilities
such as strategic
planning, flexibility, and teamwork; nor do high-
level
corporate themes like quality,
productivity, and customer satisfaction.
Core competences so defined can be grouped
into two categories:
Insightforesight
competences. These enable a company to discover or
learn facts or patterns that create first-
mover advantages. Such
insights might derive
from:
•
•
•
•
•
Technical
or scientific knowledge that produces a string of
inventions, as with Canon's optics knowledge
and miniaturization
ability
Proprietary
data, such as the behavioral and credit-scoring
knowledge used by Citibank to build the United
States' leading credit-
card business in the
1980s
Information derived from having the
largest share of leading-
edge transactions in
the deal flow, such as is now being exploited by
Enron in the gas business
Pure creative
flair in inventing successful products, such as is
displayed by the Walt Disney Company's
animated film business and
by 3M
Superior
analysis and inference, as evidenced by the
outstanding
financial returns realized by
Berkshire Hathaway and the Fidelity
Magellan
Fund under Peter Lynch using the same data
available to
other stock analysts.
What
distinguishes this kind of competence is that
value ultimately
derives from the insight
itself. A company may have to go to great
lengths to exploit it, but others could do so
just as effectively if they
had access to it.
Frontline execution competences arise in cases
where the quality of an
end product or service
can vary appreciably according to the activities
of frontline personnel. They can be defined as
a unique ability to
deliver products and
services that are consistently nearly equal in
quality to what the best craftsman would have
produced under ideal
circumstances.
(Obviously, there is no opportunity for a
frontline
execution competence strategy when
almost anyone can attain such
quality, since
there is no scope for differentiation.)
In commercial lines insurance, for
example, an individual underwriter
decides
whether the company will accept a policy, and
prices that
policy in line with hisher
personal assessment of the risk. Although
the
underwriter refers to guidelines, heshe also
enjoys great personal
latitude. Studies have
shown that when the (rather than an
average)
underwriter handles a book of policies, the
insurer's return
on equity on that book can
rise by more than 15 percent.
In
retailing, Nordstrom's ability to satisfy
customers is an example of a
frontline
competence. Its stores achieve an unsurpassed
level of
service thanks to the actions and
decisions of hundreds of members of
its
salesforce. These salespeople are embedded in a
corporate culture
that provides socialization,
incentives, and a supportive environment
for
the Nordstrom way of doing business.
Insightforesight and frontline execution
competences can coexist in
the same company,
but each will require its own managerial focus.
McDonald's, for instance, uses its frontline
execution competence to
engineer the food
delivery system at individual restaurants and its
insightforesight to identify winning sites for
its outlets.
Evaluating core competences
Successful core competences are rarer than
many imagine. Most
companies that claim a
competence-led strategy are deluding
themselves. So how can an executive in serious
pursuit of such a
strategy determine whether
it is likely to prove worthwhile?
The
first step is to define the competence as
precisely as possible, as
described above.
With definition in hand, the executive should ask
four
key questions:
1. Are our skills
truly superior?
It is obvious, but usually
overlooked, that any competence-led
strategy
requires that a company be the best (or at the
very least,
nearly the best) at its chosen
competence. Many companies wrongly
assume they
can base their strategy on competence merely
because a
particular skill is important to
their business or attractive to their
customers. If a core competence is to form the
basis of its strategy, a
company must be
demonstrably better at it than all or most of its
actual and potential competitors.
Instead
of commissioning research, companies tend to infer
their
superiority from general usage and
attitude surveys
The most direct check is
simply to ask,
that we are better at this
skill than leading competitors in technical
terms or customer opinion (or both)?,
to
find out. Surprisingly, this is rarely done.
Companies tend instead to
infer their
superiority from more general usage and attitude
surveys.
Frontline execution competences
offer output benchmarks that can
help a
company ascertain its relative capability. In
banking, North
Carolina-based Wachovia
Bank has long been recognized for its credit
skills. This superiority can be empirically
tested by examining its
history of credit
write-offs and comparing it with the experiences
of
similar banks. From 1980 to 1995, Wachovia
forfeited 0.6 percent of
loans to credit
losses compared with over 1.1 percent at the
average
regional bank, which translates into a
6 to 8 point advantage in return
on equity for
Wachovia.
Similarly, publicly available data
show that the best property and
casualty
insurance companies have an underwriting loss
ratio that is
nearly ten points below the
industry average. The difference accounts
for
an improvement in return on equity of between 10
and 20 points.
Where comparative data are not
published, companies can usually
obtain useful
benchmarks through trade associations,
practice
visits, vendors, and other sources.
Measuring superiority in insight competence
tends to be harder. Crude
measures may exist:
the number of patents granted in recent years,
technical reviews in trade magazines,
movements in market share, or
changes in the
profitability of insight-dependent transactions
such as
trading. Often, however, companies
have to rely on input rather than
output
benchmarks. Here they have to assume a direct link
between
the amount and type of resources they
dedicate to the task of finding
new insights
and their ability to develop superior insights or
to be first
with new ones.
R&D personnel
assessments represent a potentially valuable gauge
of
product development skills, for instance.
Relevant measures might
include the number of
researchers, their academic qualifications, and
their ability to influence product offerings.
Although this method is less
reliable than
output measures, it may indicate whether a claim
of
superiority is justified. A firm that has
difficulty hiring and retaining the
best
graduates should surely doubt its superiority in
insight
competence. By contrast, Microsoft is
able to select from a huge pool
of potential
employees. everybody has the luxury we have of
getting MIT's best and Stanford's best,admits
the company's Mike
Maples.
2. How
sustainable is the superiority?
A good start
to answering this question is to ask how quickly
your
best-positioned rival could imitate your
competence, assuming it knew
how. Ease of
imitation is a function of how rare a competence
is, how
long it takes to develop, and how
difficult it is to understand its source.
Sustainability can be assessed by
investigating each of these in turn.
Rareness is evaluated by comparing your
competence to those of other
firms in various
industries (not just your own). The fewer examples
you can find of similar competences, the more
likely it is that you
possess something rare.
The time it takes to develop a
competence is a function of its type and
complexity. Even if a firm could pinpoint the
source of a competitor
competence and set out
to copy it, the advantage would not be eroded
immediately. With insightforesight, the
imitator must develop
supporting mechanisms
such as databases or personnel hiring, and it
may be necessary to do this sequentially
rather than in parallel. With
frontline
competences, it can take months or years to train
personnel,
revise policies, unlearn current
practices, and make the multitude of
other
changes necessary to create and sustain a
competence. A
competence that is supported by
diverse functions within an
organization,
rests on deeply held cultural norms, and draws on
employees' tacit knowledge of tasks and
processes will be more time
consuming and
difficult to replicate.
Whether the
source of your competence can be understood by
outsiders often depends on its nature. The
inspiration that drives
insightforesight
competences is intrinsically difficult to
understand. In
frontline execution strategies,
skills may be deeply embedded in a
company's
culture. Attempts by competitors to hire
underwriters from
the best insurance firms,
for instance, seldom produce the desired
results. An individual underwriter may not be
able to transfer an ability
that is rooted in
an entire culture.
When a core competence
relies on the subtle alignment of myriad
elements, even employees may not know what is
special about what
they do
The number of
organizational elements in a competence
contributes to
its sustainability and
defensibility. A core competence comprising only
a few elements is much easier to understand
and imitate than one that
relies on the subtle
alignment of myriad elements. Indeed, in the
latter
case, even a company's employees may
not know what is special
about what they do.
3. How much value can the competence generate
in comparison
to other economic levers?
A
common error is to assume that being the best at a
particular skill
offsets other disadvantages.
The fact that a company has chosen to
emphasize one or two skills does not erase a
scale or scope
disadvantage, or compensate for
inferiority in other areas. For a
competence-
led strategy to win, that competence must be more
powerful than other strategic levers relevant
to the industry, such as
structural advantage
or access to cheap resources.
Most companies
shy away from quantifying the potential value of
competences, but it can be done. One consumer
goods company set
out to create $$1 billion in
value through a combination of superior
marketing, new product development, and
realigning the industry
value chain. To
test this plan, the strategy team looked back at
where
the company had created value in the
past. They identified six core
competences in
the business and used a combination of
quantitative
analysis and management workshops
to see how much value these
competences had
created. They then repeated the exercise looking
forward.
To their alarm, they found that
some of the very competences they
were relying
on to create future value had actually destroyed
value
historically. Moreover, all but one of
them would have to be rebuilt
from a position
of relative weakness. Needless to say, they
decided to
revise their strategy.
Analyzing the economic value of frontline
competences is relatively
straightforward. One
can estimate the value of best-in-class
performance over industry average for a
particular competence, and
compare this with
the value created by a similar level of
superiority in
other skills, by scale
advantages, or by input cost differentials.
Evaluating superior insight is more complex;
it is difficult to know in
advance just how
superior a new insight will prove to be. That
said, a
broad picture can be obtained by
assessing how much of the total
value in the
industry chain is added by the company and by
estimating
how much further technical
improvement new insights might be
capable of
contributing.
Is
the competence
integral to our value proposition?
If you are
to capture the value of your core competence and
generate
better returns for shareholders, your
investment in superior skills must
be tied to
actions that will be rewarded by the marketplace.
In the
case of frontline competences, the link
will be direct. A company
should not invest in
becoming superior in service, for example, if it
does not intend to position itself with the
customer as the best service
provider.
Where insight competence is concerned, that
competence must be
capable of generating
future value propositions. Customers do not buy
insights, they buy products; an insight must
translate into a valuable
product. Many
companies have had wonderful insights that they
were
not able to commercialize: for instance,
it was Xerox that invented the
graphical user
interface that revolutionized the personal
computer
industry, not Apple or Microsoft.
Creating core competences
If the tests
above reveal that your company does not actually
possess
a core competence, you might well ask,
we create one in a
reasonable
period?
Companies that have managed to do so
appear to adhere to a couple
of fundamental
principles.
First, a world-class
competence must steer the power structure in a
company. The keeper of the skill drives all
the company's major
decisions, even in
unrelated functions. At Procter & Gamble, for
instance, the core consumer marketing skill
resides in the advertising
department (the
company's name for brand management). Brand
managers exert a dominant influence on all
decisions throughout the
company. And at
Wachovia Bank, even relatively new credit officers
routinely block loans proposed by experienced
senior line officers.
One
telecommunications organization is currently being
reorganized so
that all functions will
eventually be funded via the marketing depart-
ment. The aim is to ensure that the —the
telephone network
and information systems that
control the installation of switches and
wires—focus improvements to the physical plant
on areas where there
is demonstrable customer
demand. This clear emphasis on a chosen
competence will eventually enable market-
driven factory development
to steer the entire
organization.
The company's power structure
cannot be driven by several functions
at once
Second, a core competence strategy must be
chosen by the CEO, not
by department heads
acting independently. Many companies get this
wrong:
especially true at successful
companies; whatever department you talk
to,
the head of that department will say, 'My area is
a core
competency of the
corporation.'
5
This does not work; a
company's
power structure cannot be driven by
several functions at once. The
CEO must select
only one, or at most two, competences to develop
at
a time.
There seem to be three distinct
routes to developing a core
competence:
evolution, where a company attempts to build a
skill at
the same time as the individuals
involved perform their usual jobs;
incubation,
where a separate group is formed to focus
exclusively on
the chosen competence; and
acquisition, where one company
purchases
another to obtain the skills it seeks.
Evolution
An evolutionary approach to
developing a core competence poses the
same
challenges as any large-scale change program, plus
a few of its
own. Evolutionary programs that
produce real benefits involve
implementing and
coordinating dozens of organizational efforts.
Companies that have attempted to build core
competences via one-off
programs almost always
fail. One firm recently installed a new
incentives system, but saw no change in
behavior. Another revamped
its training
system, to no avail. The inertia of the remaining
organizational elements was simply too strong.
Success in competence building comes
from tackling many capabilities
and practices
simultaneously. One commercial lines property
casualty
insurer seeking to improve its core
underwriting skills initiated over 60
programs. It changed its hiring criteria, used
different managers to
conduct interviews, and
modified entry-level pay scales. It adjusted
promotion paths for underwriters and revamped
its training programs.
To improve information,
it introduced new underwriting guidelines and
new information systems to provide more
accurate historical and
industry data.
In
addition, the insurer changed its measures and
incentives to reward
underwriting quality
rather than volume. It revised its organizational
structure, creating an underwriting manager in
each office to break the
link with branch
managers, who were always under pressure. At
headquarters, it made changes in the actuarial
and underwriting policy
departments, set up an
underwriting audit team, and improved links
with the claims department. Within three
years, the insurer had
improved its
underwriting relative to the industry by the
equivalent of
an extra 15 percent return on
equity.
Any business initiative requires
managers to quantify the projected
benefits of
investment, but this is especially important for
evolutionary
programs, which invariably turn
out to be more difficult than expected.
Mounting expenses and setbacks may tempt
companies to cut these
programs to protect
short-term earnings. If they have not calculated
the economic benefits they expect to see, they
may find it hard to
justify continued
investment. The precision of such a calculation
matters less than the conviction it generates.
The potential benefits of
the underwriting
program were never estimated any more precisely
than $$40 to $$50 million per year, but this was
enough to create the
conviction to proceed.
Companies that succeed with the evolutionary
approach demand
payoffs from their programs
along the way
Companies that succeed with the
evolutionary approach to building a
core
competence demand payoffs from their programs
along the way.
As one manager put it,
When
asked what he meant, he replied, would happen to a
motorcyclist who was 90 percent successful at
jumping over the Grand
Canyon? We want to have
programs that make us money even if they
are
only partially successful.
Incubation
The
advantage of incubation is that it allows a
competence to grow in
a nurturing environment
In this approach, an in-house team is isolated
from the rest of the
organization and charged
with developing a competence over a two- to
three-year period. The advantage of incubation
is that it allows a
competence to grow
in a nurturing environment. Once it has become
strong enough to drive value within the
incubator, the competence can
begin to be
transferred to other parts of the
organization.
Two companies that have
recently followed this approach are
Southwestern Bell, one of the seven large
regional US telephone
companies, and Brown &
Root, an engineering services firm.
Southwestern Bell developed a new competence
in cellular telephony
marketing, Brown & Root
in logistics management. Both are reaping
the
benefits. Brown & Root is a global leader in
logistics and
emergency response management,
with contracts with US and foreign
governments
and annual revenues approaching $$500 million.
Southwestern Bell has built a leadership
position in the US cellular
telephony market,
with 3.2 million customers and $$2.3 billion in
revenues in 1995.
Both companies created
protected and stimulating environments in
which the new competences were able to
flourish. These environments
were bounded not
by fire walls, but by one-way membranes that
allowed the incubator to beg, borrow, or steal
people and practices
from the main business,
while not being bound by its rules. Brown &
Root leveraged its existing project
engineering competence in its new
logistics
business, but broke house rules within the
incubator in a way
that would not have been
tolerated in the main organization. It used
aggressive performance-based management
approaches and freely
adapted and cannibalized
parent systems.
As in the evolutionary
approach, companies using incubation will rely
on outsiders. While in the former case the
imperative is to hire in
sufficient numbers to
counteract organizational inertia, in the latter
it
is to garner the needed skills as quickly
and efficiently as possible.
When Southwestern
Bell's cellular division needed long-distance
expertise, it hired not from the
threecompanies, but from the
competitive long-
distance resellers with commercial
skills.
Both Southwestern Bell and Brown & Root
focused on specific new
business
opportunities, not on building competence in the
abstract.
Their incubators were managed not by
stewardsor
leaders,but by business executives
looking for bottom-
line results. They employed
simple performance metrics that measured
the
strength of their competences against external
benchmarks, and
concentrated pragmatically on
delivering business results in a
challenging
new environment. Brown & Root set up its logistics
operation at a time when the main business,
hit by the oil price slump,
was losing close
to $$1 million per day. Arthur Stephens, CEO of the
new venture, confessed, of our futures were on
the line. It was
made very clear to us
that we needed to build a successful business
out of this concept.
Acquisition
Managers often resort to acquisition out of
frustration with the time
and effort involved
in evolution or incubation: witness the number of
acquisitions performed in recent years for the
primary purpose of
obtaining skills. In
reality, however, acquisition is more likely to
fail
than either of the other approaches. To
improve their chances of
success, managers
must understand how the type of competence they
seek affects their acquisition strategy, and
be aware of the structural
factors that will
influence the outcome.
In general, a strategy
to acquire frontline execution skills is a safer
bet
than one concerned with insightforesight.
In the former, a raft of
complementary
organizational systems (for instance, incentive
and
knowledge systems) supports and promotes
the competence behavior.
Even if some people
leave after the acquisition, these systems will
tend to replicate the competence behavior in
new hires. In the case of
insightforesight,
however, key individuals who leave the company
take their skills with them, and are extremely
difficult to replace.
Structurally,
competence-driven acquisitions are more often
successful
when the acquired company is not
fully integrated into the acquirer,
but
retains some autonomy. With frontline execution,
it is vital to
retain all the organizational
systems that underpin the competence
behavior,
at least until the drivers of the competence are
understood.
Full integration may disrupt or
even demolish these systems. In the
case of
insightforesight competences, it is important to
bear in mind
that the acquired company's
existing organizational arrangements may
have
persuaded talented individuals to join it. Rapid
changes could
make them leave. One
professional services firm found that over 90
percent of the managers of the company it
acquired left within two
years of full
integration.
Choosing the approach
While
the availability of suitable companies to buy is
often the deciding
factor in the acquisition
approach, choosing between evolution and
incubation is a more subtle affair. Usually,
though, the decision hinges
on a tradeoff.
Under the evolutionary approach, it may be harder
to
create a superior competence, but success
will automatically affect the
core of the
company. On the other hand, the chances of
building a new
competence are probably better
with the incubator approach, but
bringing that
skill into the rest of the company may pose great
difficulty.
Past successes with major
change programs will favor evolution; a
track
record of skunkworks, incubation
The
nature of the firm and the competence will bear on
this tradeoff.
Past successes with major
change programs will favor evolution; a
track
record of skunk works, incubation. Frontline
execution
competences may be best suited to
evolutionary development, since
their success
depends on the efforts of many people across an
organization. Conversely, insightforesight
competences may thrive in
an incubator setup
that can exploit the advantages of smaller groups
and less formal processes.
Sustaining and
enhancing core competences
Companies that
already possess a superior competence can turn
their
attention to ensuring its sustainability
and enhancing its value. At the
most basic
level, this means making sure it does not degrade
over
time through inattention. There are two
common causes for such a
problem.
First,
skilled staff can gradually drift away. While this
is usually
obvious when it happens to an
insightforesight competence, it can be
equally
devastating with a frontline execution competence.
Losses may
go unnoticed until they reach
epidemic proportions. One division of a
company with a frontline execution competence
had a reputation for
developing the firm's
best managers. It had always supplied talent to
other divisions, but at one point the
transfers increased substantially.
At the same
time, competitors launched a raid. By the time the
combined effects were noticed, the division
had lost over 25 percent of
its most promising
future managers.
Second, a competence can
decline when many staff and line managers
have
the power to change separate organizational
elements (for
instance, recruiting practices,
compensation, and promotion). If senior
management does not monitor these individual
changes for
consistency with the broader
program, they can cumulatively erode
the
competence. The property casualty insurer
mentioned earlier had
been a strong
underwriter a decade before, but the elements of
its
organization had become detached and
conflicting. As the competence
was rebuilt,
the CEO's primary roles were to articulate a
common
vision of it and to restrain any of his
subordinates who wanted to solve
their portion
of the puzzle in a way that was not consistent
with the
whole.
For those few companies
whose dominance is so strong that other
players do not challenge their competence,
simply to prevent it
degrading may ensure
sustainability. But for most companies,
maintenance is not enough. Formidable
competitors are actively trying
to displace
them. Sustainability means having to make
continuous
improvements simply to stay where
they are. And they must measure
these
improvements not just in absolute terms, but also
in relation to
competitors' efforts.
Consider a cautionary example. The
president of a specialty subsidiary
of a
diversified company declared in late 1994 that he
would base his
strategy on a set of marketing
competences. A year later, he had hired
a new
top marketing executive, replaced several of his
direct reports,
hired five or six marketing
analysts, and introduced a sophisticated
computer modeling technique. Getting budget
approvals and
sidestepping personnel
restrictions had called for enormous efforts,
and he felt he had made tremendous progress.
Unfortunately for him,
leading competitors in
the same period employed 15 to 20 analysts,
enjoyed continuity of management, gained
substantial experience with
the modeling
technique, and devoted much bigger budgets to
marketing experiments. In short, the president
had made vast strides
and fallen further
behind.
Companies must stop proclaiming that
they have a competence and
get serious about
defining, testing, and developing one
A small
number of firms already have a core competence.
These
fortunate few can devote their energies
to sustaining and enhancing it.
For most,
however, the task is different. They must stop
proclaiming
that they have a competence, get
serious about defining it, test to see
if it
would be valuable, and then set about developing
it. If they do not,
they will continue to see
mirages and perish in the sand.
About the
Authors
Kevin Coyne is a director in
McKinsey's Atlanta office; Stephen Hall
and
Trish Clifford are consultants in the London and
Cleveland offices,
respectively.
This
article is part of the research and writings of
the McKinsey
Strategy ForumStrategy Theory
Initiative (MSFSTI). An earlier article
from
this effort was Kevin P. Coyne and Somu
Subramaniam,
Bringing discipline to
strategy,The McKinsey Quarterly, 1996
Number
4, pp. 14–25. This issue contains two other
articles based on
MSFSTI research: Eric D.
Beinhocker, Strategy at the edge of chaos,
pp.
24–39, and John Hagel III and Arthur G. Armstrong,
Net gain:
Expanding markets through virtual
communities,pp. 140–53. The
authors would like
to thank Renee Dye and Alison Watkins for their
contributions to this article.
Notes
1
C.
K. Prahalad and Gary
Hamel, core competence of the
corporation,
Harvard Business Review, May-June 1990, pp.
79–91.
2
David J. Collis and Cynthia A.
Montgomery,
Strategy in the 1990s,Harvard
Business Review, July-August 1995,
pp. 118–28.
3
Dan Simpson, Director of Strategy and
Planning, The Clorox Company.
4
Paula Cholmondeley, Vice-
President, Business Development and
Global
Sourcing, Owens-Corning Fiberglass.
5
Dan
Simpson, Director of Strategy and Planning, The
Clorox Company.