A Harvard Business School post by Jim Heskett reviews:
“Now comes a new book, The End of Competitive Advantage, by Rita Gunther McGrath. Hers is a frontal attack on accepted strategic planning methods designed, in her opinion, for another time. These are methods based on the presumption that competitive advantage is sustainable. It’s a presumption that she claims “creates all the wrong reflexes” in a world in which the best one can hope for is “transient competitive advantage.”
McGrath’s prescription for achieving transient competitive advantage includes such things as smaller, faster, more agile organizations–and where management-by-consensus is a thing of the past. The emphasis is on marshalling rather than owning assets, including talent. In order to ensure the appropriate deployment of these assets from one opportunity to another, it will be necessary to recentralize control over the resource allocation process, moving it out of strategic business units (SBUs). It raises questions about the relevancy of SBUs as opposed to transient teams as a form of organization.” To read the entire post, click here.