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1、The Core Competence of the CorporationC.K. Prahalad and Gary HamelThe most powerful way to prevail in global competition is still invisible to many companies. During the 1980s, top executives were judged on their ability to restructure, declutter, and delayer their corporations. In the 1990s, theyll
2、 be judged on their ability to identify, cultivate, and exploit the core competencies that make growth possible indeed, theyll have to rethink the concept of the corporation itself.Consider the last ten years of GTE and NEC. In the early 1980s, GTE was well positioned to become a major player in the
3、 evolving information technology industry. It was active in telecommunications. Its operations spanned a variety of businesses including telephones, switching and transmission systems, digital PABX, semiconductors, packet switching, satellites, defense systems, and lighting products. And GTEs Entert
4、ainment Products Group, which produced Sylvania color TVs, had a position in related display technologies. In 1980, GTEs sales were $9.98 billion, and net cash flow was $1.73 billion. NEC, in contrast, was much smaller, at $3.8 billion in sales. It had a comparable technological base and computer bu
5、sinesses, but it had no experience as an operating telecommunications company. Yet look at the positions of GTE and NEC in 1988. GTEs 1988 sales were $16.46 billion, and NECs sales were considerably higher at $21.89 billion. GTE has, in effect, become a telephone operating company with a position in
6、 defense and lighting products. GTEs other businesses are small in global terms. GTE has divested Sylvania TV and Telenet, put switching, transmission, and digital PABX into joint ventures, and closed down semiconductors. As a result, the international position of GTE has eroded. Non U.S. revenue as
7、 a percent of total revenue dropped from 20% to 15% between 1980 and 1988. NEC has emerged as the world leader in semiconductors and as a first tier player in telecommunications products and computers. It has consolidated its position in mainframe computers. It has moved beyond public switching and
8、transmission to include such lifestyle products as mobile telephones, facsimile machines, and laptop computers bridging the gap between telecommunications and office automation. NEC is the only company in the world to be in the top five in revenue in telecommunications, semiconductors, and mainframe
9、s. Why did these two companies, starting with comparable business portfolios, perform so differently? Largely because NEC conceived of itself in terms of core competencies, and GTE did not.Rethinking the Corporation Once, the diversified corporation could simply point its business units at particula
10、r end product markets and admonish them to become world leaders. But with market boundaries changing ever more quickly, targets are elusive and capture is at best temporary. A few companies have proven themselves adept at inventing new markets, quickly entering emerging markets, and dramatically shi
11、fting patterns of customer choice in established markets. These are the ones to emulate. The critical task for management is to create an organization capable of infusing products with irresistible functionality or, better yet, creating products that customers need but have not yet even imagined. Th
12、is is a deceptively difficult task. Ultimately, it requires radical change in the management of major companies. It means, first of all, that top managements of Western companies must assume responsibility for competitive decline. Everyone knows about high interest rates, Japanese protectionism, out
13、dated antitrust laws, obstreperous unions, and impatient investors. What is harder to see, or harder to acknowledge, is how little added momentum companies actually get from political or macroeconomic relief. Both the theory and practice of Western management have created a drag on our forward motio
14、n. It is the principles of management that are in need of reform. NEC versus GTE, again, is instructive and only one of many such comparative cases we analyzed to understand the changing basis for global leadership. Early in the 1970s, NEC articulated a strategic intent to exploit the convergence of
15、 computing and communications, what it called C&C Success, top management reckoned, would hinge on acquiring competencies, particularly in semiconductors. Management adopted an appropriate strategic architecture, summarized by C&C, and then communicated its intent to the whole organization and the o
16、utside world during the mid 1970s. NEC constituted a C&C Committee of top managers to oversee the development of core products and core competencies. NEC put in place coordination groups and committees that cut across the interests of individual businesses. Consistent with its strategic architecture
17、, NEC shifted enormous resources to strengthen its position in components and central processors. By using collaborative arrangements to multiply internal resources, NEC was able to accumulate a broad array of core competencies. NEC carefully identified three interrelated streams of technological an
18、d market evolution. Top management determined that computing would evolve from large mainframes to distributed processing, components from simple ICs to VLSI, and communications from mechanical cross bar exchange to complex digital systems we now call ISDN. As things evolved further, NEC reasoned, t
19、he computing, communications, and components businesses would so overlap that it would be very hard to distinguish among them, and that there would be enormous opportunities for any company that had built the competencies needed to serve all three markets. NEC top management determined that semicond
20、uctors would be the companys most important core product. It entered into myriad strategic alliances over 100 as of 1987 aimed at building competencies rapidly and at low cost. In mainframe computers, its most noted relationship was with Honeywell and Bull. Almost all the collaborative arrangements
21、in the semiconductor component field were oriented toward technology access. As they entered collaborative arrangements, NECs operating managers understood the rationale for these alliances and the goal of internalizing partner skills. NECs director of research summed up its competence acquisition d
22、uring the 1970s and 1980s this way: From an investment standpoint, it was much quicker and cheaper to use foreign technology. There wasnt a need for us to develop new ideas.” No such clarity of strategic intent and strategic architecture appeared to exist at GTE. Although senior executives discussed
23、 the implications of the evolving information technology industry, no commonly accepted view of which competencies would be required to compete in that industry were communicated widely. While significant staff work was done to identify key technologies, senior line managers continued to act as if t
24、hey were managing independent business units. Decentralization made it difficult to focus on core competencies. Instead, individual businesses became increasingly dependent on outsiders for critical skills, and collaboration became a route to staged exits. Today, with a new management team in place,
25、 GTE has repositioned itself to apply its competencies to emerging markets in telecommunications services.The Roots of Competitive Advantage The distinction we observed in the way NEC and GTE conceived of themselves a portfolio of competencies versus a portfolio of businesses was repeated across man
26、y industries. From 1980 to 1988, Canon grew by 264%, Honda by 200%. Compare that with Xerox and Chrysler. And if Western managers were once anxious about the low cost and high quality of Japanese imports, they are now over;whelmed by the pace at which Japanese rivals are inventing new markets, creat
27、ing new products, and enhancing them. Canon has given us personal copiers; Honda has moved from motorcycles to four wheel off road buggies. Sony developed the 8mm camcorder, Yamaha, the digital piano. Komatsu developed an underwater remote controlled bulldozer, while Casios latest gambit is a small
28、screen color LCD television. Who would have anticipated the evolution of these vanguard markets? In more established markets, the Japanese challenge has been just as disquieting. Japanese companies are generating a blizzard of features and functional enhancements that bring technological sophisticat
29、ion to everyday products. Japanese car producers have been pioneering four wheel steering, four valve-per cylinder engines, in car navigation systems, and sophisticated electronic engine management systems. On the strength of its product features, Canon is now a player in facsimile transmission mach
30、ines, desktop laser printers, even semiconductor manufacturing equipment. In the short run, a companys competitiveness derives from the price/performance attributes of current products. But the survivors of the first wave of global competition, Western and Japanese alike, are all converging on simil
31、ar and formidable standards for product cost and quality minimum hurdles for continued competition, but less and less important as sources of differential advantage. In the long run, competitiveness derives from an ability to build, at lower cost and more speedily than competitors, the core competen
32、cies that spawn unanticipated products. The real sources of advantage are to be found in managements ability to consolidate corporatewide technologies and production skills into competencies that empower individual businesses to adapt quickly to changing opportunities. Senior executives who claim th
33、at they cannot build core competencies either because they feel the autonomy of business units is sacrosanct or because their feet are held to the quarterly budget fire should think again. The problem in many Western companies is not that their senior executives are any less capable than those in Ja
34、pan nor that Japanese companies possess greater technical capabilities. Instead, it is their adherence to a concept of the corporation that unnecessarily limits the ability of individual businesses to fully exploit the deep reservoir of technological capability that many American and European compan
35、ies possess. The diversified corporation is a large tree. The trunk and major limbs are core products, the smaller branches are business units; the leaves, flowers, and fruit are end products. The root system that provides nourishment, sustenance, and stability is the core competence. You can miss t
36、he strength of competitors by looking only at their end products, in the same way you miss the strength of a tree if you look only at its leaves. (See the chart Competencies: The Roots of Competitiveness.”) Core competencies are the collective learning in the organization, especially how to coordina
37、te diverse production skills and integrate multiple streams of technologies. Consider Sonys capacity to miniaturize or Philipss optical media expertise. The theoretical knowledge to put a radio on a chip does not in itself assure a company the skill to produce a miniature radio no bigger than a busi
38、ness card. To bring off this feat, Casio must harmonize know how in miniaturization, microprocessor design, material science, and ultrathin precision casing the same skills it applies in its miniature card calculators, pocket TVs, and digital watches. If core competence is about harmonizing streams
39、of technology, it is also about the organization of work and the delivery of value. Among Sonys competencies is miniaturization. To bring miniaturization to its products, Sony must ensure that technologists, engineers, and marketers have a shared understanding of customer needs and of technological
40、possibilities. The force of core competence is felt as decisively in services as in manufacturing. Citicorp was ahead of others investing in an operating system that allowed it to participate in world markets 24 hours a day. Its competence in provided the company the means to differentiate itself fr
41、om many financial service institutions. Core competence is communication, involvement, and a deep commitment to working across organizational boundaries. It involves many levels of people and all functions. World class research in, for example, lasers or ceramics can take place in corporate laborato
42、ries without having an impact on any of the businesses of the company. The skills that together constitute core competence must coalesce around individuals whose efforts are not so narrowly focused that they cannot recognize the opportunities for blending their functional expertise with those of oth
43、ers in new and interesting ways. Core competence does not diminish with use. Unlike physical assets, which do deteriorate over time, competencies are enhanced as they are applied and shared. But competencies still need to be nurtured and protected; knowledge fades if it is not used. Competencies are
44、 the glue that binds existing businesses. They are also the engine for new business development. Patterns of diversification and market entry may be guided by them, not just by the attractiveness of markets. Consider 3Ms competence with sticky tape. in dreaming up businesses as diverse as Post it no
45、tes, magnetic tape, photographic film, pressure sensitive tapes, and coated abrasives, the company has brought to bear widely shared competencies in substrates, coatings, and adhesives and devised various ways to combine them. Indeed, 3M has invested consistently in them. What seems to be an extreme
46、ly diversified portfolio of businesses belies a few shared core competencies. In contrast, there are major companies that have had the potential to build core competencies but failed to do so because top management was unable to conceive of the company as anything other than a collection of discrete
47、 businesses. GE sold much of its consumer electronics business to Thomson of France, arguing that it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain its competitiveness in this sector. That was undoubtedly so, but it is ironic that it sold several key businesses to competitors who were already compe
48、tence leaders Black & Decker in small electrical motors, and Thomson, which was eager to build its competence in microelectronics and had learned from the Japanese that a position in consumer electronics was vital to this challenge. Management trapped in the strategic business unit (SBU) mind set al
49、most inevitably finds its individual businesses dependent on external sources for critical components, such as motors or compressors. But these are not just components. They are core products that contribute to the competitiveness of a wide range of end products. They are the physical embodiments of core competencies.How Not to Think of Competence Since companies are in a race to build the competencies that determine global leadership, successful companies have stopped imagining