George Stalk, Jr., Philip Evans, Lawrence E. Shulman
Competing on capabilities provides a way for companies to gain the benefits of both focus and diversification. Put another way, a company that focuses on its strategic capabilities can compete in a remarkable diversity of regions, products, and businesses and do it far more coherently than the typical conglomerate can. Such a company is a “capabilities predator”—able to come out of nowhere and move rapidly … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Authors: George Stalk Jr., Lawrence Shulman, Philip Evans | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy
From Reciprocity to Reputation
The basis of trust may be changing. It used to be based on reciprocity and as such was fragile and personal. Because of technology, trust is now based on reputation among people who don’t know each. It is both less personal and more robust.
Content: Article | Author: Philip Evans | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Trends / Analysis
Trusting Transactions
This article argues that a big new managerial challenge is to lower transaction costs and that the way to do this is to make trust scalable. It’s not an argument you hear every day. In fact, it may surprise people. Most of us think that IT has lowered transaction costs. But the authors present evidence that our obsession with lowering production costs has led to … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Bob Wolf, Philip Evans | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Economics, Miscellaneous
The End of the Endgame?
Over the past 40 years, strategic thought has evolved through three distinct phases-bodies of thought that have built progressively on each other. The Internet takes us it into a fourth: a phase that is defined by the explicit rejection of central premises of each of its predecessors. But to understand where strategic planning is going, it is first necessary to review where it has been.
… [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Philip Evans | Source: Journal of Business Strategy | Subject: Strategy
Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy
Content: Book | Authors: Philip Evans, Thomas S. Wurster | Subjects: Economics, Management