Customer Reviews
As important now as ever.. - By: R. N. Harris, 01 Oct 2004 
It's been a number of years since Hamel co-wrote this seminal work, & its essence has been re-worked frequently, both by him & others. Indeed, it's a testament to its importance & relevance that it forms the backbone of so much of today's 'accepted wisdom'.
However, neither nostalgia or originality are the reasons to buy this book - rather it's simply that it's so well written - each argument is clear, progressing through why competitive strategy is not quite as mechanical as Porter would have us believe, & then illustrating how this has been achieved by well-known companies.
The result is a compelling & convincing read, which has stood the test of time - if you're looking for a framework for understanding how to compete with other firms, grab a copy.
Few would not profit from this book - By: DAVID-LEONARD WILLIS, 13 Jul 2004 Few companies that began the 1980s as industry leaders ended the decade with their leadershipin tact & undiminished. Many household name companies saw their success eroded or destroyed by tides of technological, demographic & regulatory change & order-of-magnitude productivity gains made by nontraditional competitors. "Do you really have a global strategy", the first HBR article by Hamel & Prahalad, developed the theme that small companies could prevail against larger, richer companies by inventing new ways of doing more with less. Differencesin resource effectiveness could not be explained by efficiency, labor or capital, but by amazingly ambitious goals that stretched beyond typical strategic plans, raising the question how such incredible goals could get past the credibility test & be made tangible & real to employees? Frequently the small challengers rewrote the rules of engagement; flexibility & speed were built atop supplier-management advantage, built atop quality advantages. Companies made commitments to particular skill areas a decadein advance of specific end-product markets. How did executives select which capabilities to build for the future? Some managers were foresightful, others imagined & gave birth to entirely new products & services. These managers created new competitive space while laggard companies protected the past rather than creating the future. Existing theory throws little light on what it takes to fundamentally reshape an industry & the gap provoked this bookin which the goal is to enlarge the concept of the industry & not just the organization. Being incrementally better is not enough because a company that cannot imagine the future won't be around to enjoy it. This book is about strategy & how to think by drawing on the experience of companies that have overcome resource disadvantages to build positions of global leadership. It is about companies that escaped the curse of success to rebuild industry leadership a second or third time. It has been written for companies that believe that the best way to win is to rewrite the rules; it is for those who are not afraid to challenge orthodoxy, for those who prefer to build rather than cut, for those committed to making a difference & staking out the future first.
We need to ask ourselves eight questions:
- does senior management have a clear & broadly shared understanding of how the industry may be differentin ten years time? Is management's view of the future clearly reflectedin short-term priorities?
- How influential is my companyin setting the new rules of competition within the industry? Is it regularly defining new ways of doing business & setting new standards of customer satisfaction?
- Is senior management fully alert to the dangers posed by new, unconventional rivals? Are potential threats to the current business model widely understood? Do senior executives possess a keen sense of urgency about the need to reinvent the current business model?
- Is my company pursuing growth & new business development with as much passion as it is pursuing operational efficiency & downsizing? Do we have a clear view of where the next revenue growth will come from?
- What percentage of our improvement efforts focuses on creating advantages new to the industry, & what percentage focuses on merely catching up to our competitors? Are competitors as eager to benchmark us, as we are to benchmark them?
- What is driving our improvement & transformation agenda - our own view of future opportunities or the actions of our competitors? Is our transformation agenda mostly offensive or defensive?
- Am I more of a maintenance engineer keeping today's business humming along or an architect imagining tomorrow's businesses? Do I devote more energy to prolonging the past than I do to creating the future?
- What is the balance between hope & anxietyin my company; between confidencein our ability to find & exploit opportunities for growth & new business development & concern about our ability to maintain competitivenessin our traditional businesses; between a sense of opportunity & a sense of vulnerability, both corporate & personal?
These are not rhetorical questions. We are told to get a pencil & rate our company because these questions go unansweredin many cases. Such questions challenge the assumption that top management isin control or even that their knowledge & experience may be irrelevant or wrong-headed for the future. The urgent drives out the important & the future goes largely unexplored; the capacity to act is considered to be more important than the capacity to imagine. A capacity to invent new industries & to reinvent old ones is a prerequisite for getting to the future first & a precondition for staying outin front. Gaining an understanding of how to accomplish this most difficult task is the central mission of this book.
What must we do to ensure that the industry evolvesin a way that is maximally advantageous for us? What skills & capabilities must we begin building now if we are to occupy the industry high groundin the future? How should we organize for opportunities that may not fit neatly within the boundaries of current business units & divisions? The answers are to be foundin this book. Armed with this information, a company can create a pro-active agenda for organizational transformation & can control its own destiny by controlling the destiny of its own industry. No company can escape the need to reskill its people, reshape its product portfolio, redesign its processes, & redirect its resources. There is not one future but hundreds; there can be as many prizes as runners; imagination is the only limiting factor. In no way does the success of one preordain the failure of another. What distinguishes leaders from laggards, & greatness form mediocrity is the ability to imagine what could be. If your senior management did not do well on the eight questions, then your company may not be around a decade from now. There are few who would not profit from reading this book.
Great Up-Date on Peter Drucker's Strategy Model - By: Donald Mitchell, 30 May 2004 I am a corporate strategy consultant who works mostly with FORTUNE 200 companies. Strategic thinking has gonein & out of fashionin such companies several timesin the last 40 years. With this book, Hamel & Prahalad have raised the value of strategic thinkingin the current contextin an effective way.
This book is clearly designed with the large companyin mind, where the need to envision, communicate about, & organize for the future is most difficult. By breaking down strategic thinking into the elements described here, the authors make strategic thinking easier for those who have little experience.
Interestingly enough, many companies have "banned" strategic thinkingin favor of more tactically-oriented programs that produce near-term cost reductions. Our firm did a survey of the most successful CEOs, & they reported that they felt that better strategies had the most potential to most improve their companies. These same CEOs also reported that they understood little about how to create better strategies. In such companies, COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE can provide an excellent balance.
A good book to readin conjunction with this one is Peter Drucker's, MANAGEMENT, which provides the intellectual heritage for many of these ideas. For people who need more detail than Drucker normally provides, COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE will be the more helpful book.
Concise, accessible and easy to apply - By: , 23 Oct 2001 
This is a very well written business book for practical application to a wide range of business scenarios - veyr readable style, well structured, & with useful illustrations & examples.
EXCELLENT FOR MANAGEMENT STUDENTS. Useful for revision. - By: , 09 Aug 2000 I began to read the first page & found it very difficult to put the book down. HAMEL AND PRAHALAD go into great depth about the WHY! OF A SITUATION> THIS BOOK HELPED ME ACHIEVE AN EXCELLENT GRADE IN MY MANAGement exams of May 2000. THERE IS PHILOSOPHY BEHIND BUSINESS WHich has laid dormant for many years but HAMEL AND PRAHALAD HAVE RESEArched their work & have given us a gift of a catalyst for learning & applying more knowledge into our world of Making a success of our goals.
