Core competencies meld customer value with a special ability of the producer.

Leadership rests on being able to do something others cannot do at all or find difficult to do even poorly. It rests on core competencies that meld market or customer value with a special ability of the producer or supplier. Some examples: the ability of the Japanese to miniaturize electronic components, which is based on their three-hundred-year-old artistic tradition of putting landscape paintings on a tiny lacquered box; or the almost unique ability GM has had for eighty years to make successful acquisitions.

But how does one identify both the core competencies one has already and those the business needs to take and maintain ...

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