The End of Competitive Advantage

Preface

Strategy is stuck. If you dropped into a boardroom discussion or an executive team meeting, chances are you’d hear a lot of strategic thinking based on ideas and frameworks designed in, and for, a different era. The biggies—such as Michael Porter’s five forces analysis, BCG’s growth-share matrix for analyzing corporate portfolios, and Hamel and Prahalad’s core competence of the firm—are all tremendously important ideas.¹ Many strategies today are still informed by them. But virtually all strategy frameworks and tools in use today are based on a single dominant idea: that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. This idea is strategy’s most fundamental concept. It’s every company’s holy grail. And it’s ...