Atanu Chaudhuri, Craig Giffi, Kumar Kandaswami, Shalabh Kumar Singh

While companies assume there is necessarily a trade-off between efficiency and responsiveness in a constrained environment, research shows that only those organizations operating near the performance frontier (the optimal performance a company can achieve) should expect trade-offs. The companies that operate away from the frontier have the potential to improve both efficiency and responsiveness; the companies that operate at or close to optimal performance levels can strive to shift their frontier through innovation and gain sustainable competitive advantage.