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After his graduation, Gary Hamel started his
career as a Hospital Administrator. After the
completion of his PhD he transformed into an
academician and brought a new focus to the subject of
corporate strategy. Along with CK Prahalad, a Professor
at the University of Michigan and noted management consultant, Hamel wrote the famous
book, Competing for the Future and advocated the idea
of core competency. The basic principles of these competencies according to them "Are the
collective learning in the organization, especially how
to coordinate diverse production skills and
integrate multiple streams of technologies." According
to them, in today's corporate world, winning in a business is not about being number one. It is
about who "gets to the future first". They
urge companies to create their own futures,
envision new markets and reinvent themselves. Thus,
the idea of core competencies boosted the business outsourcing process and allowed companies
to handover the non-core side of their business operations to others. With the idea of
core competency, corporates started to concentrate
on the things that they did best.
Hamel and Prahalad disregard the portfolio perspective as a viable approach to
corporate strategy. They argue that a corporation must
be built around a core of shared competencies. It should not be
another layer of the accounting department, but must add value by articulating
the strategic architecture that guides the process
of competency building. Hamel's thoughts on corporate strategy brought about a paradigm
shift in the precision of traditional planning.
Great strategies come from challenging the status quo.
He describes that traditional strategic planning is
not strategic; rather it is a calendar-driven ritual
about plans and planning. Therefore, strategic innovation will be the main source of
competitive advantage in the future. |
