![We all know that we are driven by speed. Deregulation and the internet have made competition global. Technology makes more technology. So speed-of-change is only ever going to accelerate.
[[MORE]]Competitive advantage is fleeting. Firms need to...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/86dae9e2f593980d0336803afd261bda/tumblr_nx6ekit9cb1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
We all know that we are driven by speed. Deregulation and the internet have made competition global. Technology makes more technology. So speed-of-change is only ever going to accelerate.
Competitive advantage is fleeting. Firms need to continually generate new sources of advantage. Industries are constantly evolving; recreated by competition.
Competition is a dynamic process. One in which firms jostle with each other to create competitive advantage only to see this lead vanish overnight through rivals’ innovation and imitation - or by customers making a substitution. Travelling via Uber rather than hailing a black cab. Staying in a spare room or apartment found via Airbnb rather than in a hotel sourced through a travel agent.
The importance of bringing new products and services to market or adopting new processes at speed is well-trodden ground. But what about perseverance?
It takes sustained commitment and often steely nerve to develop new skills and capabilities. Especially when you - and your shareholders - can see that your ‘traditional’ competition isn’t spending the same amount of time and energy - and therefore money - on developing these new skills.
In an increasingly networked firm competing for the future means bedding down new competences at scale. Developing and using new skills at the level of the whole organisation and increasingly beyond the company walls throughout the network of alliances, joint ventures and key suppliers.
Today’s successful firms know well their customers’ needs … of today. But, focusing too closely only on these desires can all the needs of tomorrow’s customer to be missed. So overlooking the cues to develop new capabilities to service them.
These are short thoughts. For longer, more fully-formed thoughts covering business, public relations and change visit www.sabguthrie.info or sign up to email updates.
![CEOs may thump the boardroom table and demand “a new game changer … a disrupter” but usually their firms aren’t structured in a way that can create radical innovation.
[[MORE]]Often big ideas aren’t as competitive as incrementally improved ideas...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/89b087e564a9ccb8269ff735c8736230/tumblr_nx0u10Kk2u1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
![Yesterday Seth Godin, the father of permission marketing, wrote about people’s differences. In a post titled: When in doubt, draw a bell curve Godin mused:
[[MORE]]““We’re puzzled when we see uneven acceptance or uneven performance, because it’s easy...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/5bc97ae30c2a940df038f416f2b97b99/tumblr_nw8yz7EnBK1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
![You know when you ask a colleague what they’re working on and they tell you how they’re “working on some strategies to tackle blah, blah” and you think “perhaps you mean tactics …” but then think perhaps you’re being pedantic?
[[MORE]]So, what’s your...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3abd0553685881ad503ab319d3d01a40/tumblr_nvpt2tSGMb1uxr35ho1_1280.jpg)
![Managers have moved from knowledge hoarders to knowledge pumps. The moniker: ‘knowledge is power’ is being replaced with ‘power belongs to the network’.
[[MORE]]Writing in the Harvard Business Review Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms describe a growing...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ca74bac0cbb7000ead217ec01e13af53/tumblr_nwk2bzEUVY1uxr35ho1_540.jpg)
