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A core competency is a concept in management theory introduced by C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel. [1] It can be defined as "a harmonized combination of multiple resources and skills that distinguish a firm in the marketplace" and therefore are the foundation of companies' competitiveness. [2]
Core competencies fulfill three criteria: [1]
For example, a company's core competencies may include precision mechanics, fine optics, and micro-electronics. These help it build cameras, but may also be useful in making other products that require these competencies. [1]
A core competency results from a specific set of skills or production techniques that deliver additional value to the customer. These enable an organization to access a wide variety of markets.
In a 1990 article titled "The Core Competence of the Corporation", C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel illustrated that core competencies lead to the development of core products, which can further be used to build many other products for end users. Core competencies are developed through the process of continuous improvements over the period of time rather than a single large change. To succeed in an emerging global market, it is more important and required to build core competencies rather than to do vertical integration. For example, NEC utilized its portfolio of core competencies to dominate the semiconductor, telecommunications, and consumer electronics market.
The use and understanding of the concept of core competences can be very important to enterprises. They can use core competences in order to excel at the contrivance of core products. [1] Enterprises could also use core competences to raise the values of customers and stakeholders. [3]
Alexander and Martin (2013) state that the competitiveness of a company is based on the ability to develop core competences. [4] A core competence is, for example, a specialised knowledge, technique, or skill. The core capability is the management ability to develop, out of the core competences, core products and new business. Competence building is, therefore, an outcome of strategic architecture which must be enforced by top management in order to exploit its full capacity.[ citation needed ]
Importantly, according to C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel (1990) definition, core competencies are the "collective learning across the corporation". They can, therefore, not be applied to the SBU (strategic business unit) and represent resource combination steered from the corporate level. Because the term "core competence" is often confused with "something a company is particularly good at", some caution should be taken not to dilute the original meaning.
In Competing for the Future, the authors C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel show how executives can develop the industry foresight necessary to adapt to industry changes and discover ways of controlling resources that will enable the company to attain goals despite any constraints. Executives should develop a point of view on which core competencies can be built for the future to revitalize the process of new business creation. Developing an independent point of view of tomorrow's opportunities and building capabilities that exploit them is the key to future industry leadership.[ vague ]
For an organization to be competitive, it needs not only tangible resources but intangible resources like core competences that are difficult and challenging to achieve. [5] It is critical to manage and enhance the competences in response to industry changes in the future. For example, Microsoft has expertise in many IT based innovations where, for a variety of reasons, it is difficult for competitors to replicate or compete with Microsoft's core competences.
In a race to achieve cost cutting, quality, and productivity, most executives do not spend their time developing a corporate view of the future because this exercise demands high intellectual energy and commitment. The difficult questions may challenge their own ability to view the future opportunities but an attempt to find their answers will lead towards organizational benefits.
Core competencies are related to a firm's product portfolio via core products. Prahalad and Hamel (1990) defined core competencies as the engines for the development of core products and services. Competencies are the roots of which the corporation grows, like a tree whose fruit are end products. [6]
Core products contribute "to the competitiveness of a wide range of end products. They are the physical embodiment of core competencies." [7] Approaches for identifying product portfolios with respect to core competencies and vice versa have been developed in recent years. One approach for identifying core competencies with respect to a product portfolio has been proposed by Danilovic & Leisner (2007). [8] They use design structure matrices for mapping competencies to specific products in the product portfolio. Using their approach, clusters of competencies can be aggregated to core competencies. Bonjour & Micaelli (2010) introduced a similar method for assessing how far a company has achieved its development of core competencies. [9] More recently Hein et al. link core competencies to Christensen's concept of capabilities, which is defined as resources, processes, and priorities. [10] [11] Furthermore, they present a method to evaluate different product architectures with respect to their contribution to the development of core competencies.
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Marketing strategy refers to efforts undertaken by an organization to increase its sales and achieve competitive advantage. In other words, it is the method of advertising a company's products to the public through an established plan through the meticulous planning and organization of ideas, data, and information.
Gary P. Hamel is an American management consultant. He is a founder of Strategos, an international management consulting firm based in Chicago.
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Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad was an Indian-American entrepreneur and author.
Strategic thinking is a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving a goal or set of goals. As a cognitive activity, it produces thought.
Competence is the set of demonstrable personal characteristics or KSAOs that enable job performance at a high level with consistency and minimal difficulty. Competency in human resources is an organizational criterion for excellence that encompasses the behaviors, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities that enable employees to perform their roles effectively and reliably.
The resource-based view (RBV), often referred to as the "resource-based view of the firm", is a managerial framework used to determine the strategic resources a firm can exploit to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
Co-creation, in the context of a business, refers to a product or service design process in which input from consumers plays a central role from beginning to end. Less specifically, the term is also used for any way in which a business allows consumers to submit ideas, designs or content. This way, the firm will not run out of ideas regarding the design to be created and at the same time, it will further strengthen the business relationship between the firm and its customers. Another meaning is the creation of value by ordinary people, whether for a company or not. The first person to use the "Co-" in "co-creation" as a marketing prefix was Koichi Shimizu, professor of Josai University, in 1979. In 1979, "co-marketing" was introduced at the Japan Society of Commerce's national conference. Everything with "Co" comes from here.
In organizational theory, dynamic capability is the capability of an organization to purposefully adapt an organization's resource base. The concept was defined by David Teece, Gary Pisano and Amy Shuen, in their 1997 paper Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management, as the firm’s ability to engage in adapting, integrating, and reconfiguring internal and external organizational skills, resources, and functional competences to match the requirements of a changing environment.
Hypercompetition, a term first coined in business strategy by Richard D’Aveni, describes a dynamic competitive world in which no action or advantage can be sustained for long. Hypercompetition is a key feature of the new global digital economy. Not only is there more competition, there is also tougher and smarter competition. It is a state in which the rate of change in the competitive rules of the game are in such flux that only the most adaptive, fleet, and nimble organizations will survive. Hypercompetitive markets are also characterized by a “quick-strike mentality” to disrupt, neutralize, or moot the competitive advantage of market leaders and important rivals.
Birger Wernerfelt is a Danish economist and management theorist, and JC Penney Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is best known for “A Resource-based View of the Firm” (1984), which is one of the most cited papers in the social sciences.
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Rita Gunther McGrath is an American strategic management scholar and professor of management at the Columbia Business School. She is known for her work on strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including the development of discovery-driven planning.
Capability management is the approach to the management of an organization, typically a business organization or firm, based on the "theory of the firm" as a collection of capabilities that may be exercised to earn revenues in the marketplace and compete with other firms in the industry. Capability management seeks to manage the stock of capabilities within the firm to ensure its position in the industry and its ongoing profitability and survival.
Cuno Pümpin is a Swiss economist, entrepreneur and consultant. He was born in Basel, Switzerland.
Media management is a business administration discipline that identifies and describes strategic and operational phenomena and problems in the leadership of media enterprises. Media management contains the functions strategic management, procurement management, production management, organizational management and marketing of media enterprises.
Yves Doz is a French academic. He is a professor of strategic management at INSEAD, where he holds the Solvay Chaired Professorship of Technological Innovation, and is a Fellow of CEDEP. His research interests focus on innovation, the strategy and organization of multinational corporations, strategic alliances, and on how business organizations can develop the capability to adapt quickly to changes in competitive environments. More recently, he has been working with a number of national governments on strategic adaptability and agility. He is the author of numerous books and articles, which include the first comprehensive book on strategic alliances, co-authored with Gary Hamel, and the Multinational Mission, co-authored with CK Prahalad.
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