Hamel and Prahalad offer a masterful blueprint for what a company must be doing today if it is to occupy the competitive high ground of tomorrow. By showing that the key to future industry leadership is to develop an independent point of view about tomorrow's opportunities and build capabilities that exploit them, the authors reveal an entirely new definition of what it means to be strategic--and successful.
Winning in business today is not about being number one--it's about who "gets to the future first," write management consultants Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad. In Competing for the Future, they urge companies to create their own futures, envision new markets, and reinvent themselves.
Hamel and Prahalad caution that complacent managers who get too comfortable in doing things the way they've always done will see their companies fall behind. For instance, the authors consider the battle between IBM and Apple in the 1970s. Entrenched as the leading mainframe-computer maker, IBM failed to see the potential market for personal computers. That left the door wide open for Apple, which envisioned a computer for every man, woman, and child. The authors write, "At worst, laggards follow the path of greatest familiarity. Challengers, on the other hand, follow the path of greatest opportunity, wherever it leads." They argue that business leaders need to be more than "maintenance engineers," worrying only about budget cutting, streamlining, re-engineering, and other old tactics. Definitely not for dilettantes, Competing for the Future is for managers who are serious getting their companies in front. -- Dan Ring
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
quite easily one of the best works in strategy:
Quite easily one of the best works in strategy which helps sharpen thinking on key aspects like core competencies, strategic architecture, roadmaps to competing effectively in the future. This is a classic.
Still relevant:
Although, written in 90's, this book provides an excellent insight in to planning and architecting the enterprises of future which is still relevant. Take an example of GEICO or Progressive of the Insurance world. Take a look at how they built an innovative distribution channels and made it their core competency. While their competition was comforted with old agency distribution model and now competition is trying to duplicate their core competency instead of thinking about future.
good book:
Like every business book, it has at least 100 pages more than what would have been necessary to get the idea.
Don't Ignore the Lessons in this Book...:
"Gary Hamel is one of the brightest corporate strategist on the planet. And C.K. Prahalad is a brilliant business mind from the University of Michigan. Together, they have produced a profound book that will revitalize many companies. Those firms and organizations that ignore the new strategic architecture will be like `the deer caught in the headlights'... they will be doomed like many of the companies that have already disappeared from the ranks of the Fortune 1000." -- Ko Hayashi
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