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Competing for the Future and the Core Competence of the Corporation

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Competing for the Future and the Core Competence of the Corporation
The two articles named in the title above, written by Humel and Prahalad respectively, explore how projection affects a company’s competitiveness.
Summary
The most dominant companies in the world have been shown to have two major characteristics which are strategic planning and core competence. A company’s strategy simply means its master plan for the future while its core competence is its strategic advantage. Most companies that have a strategic intent and a strategic architecture to develop those intent always end up being more dominant than companies that do not project towards the future.
The managers of different strategic business units (SBU) in a company or organization must be aware of the common strategic intent being pursued, and collaborate towards it rather than compete against each other for short term benefits. This will enable competences to be easily identified and clarified. Access to diverse markets, distinct customer benefits and distinctiveness are the three major characteristics of a core competence. It is necessary to focus on the core competence in order to capture an emerging market. A core product developed from a core competence, derives an end product which can be sold to a customer at the consumer or manufacturing level. The core products are the components that add to the quality of the end products.
Reflection
To capture an emerging market, an industry must strive to forecast emerging customer needs. Both strategic intent and strategic architecture must be articulated by top management for SBU managers as a point of convergence. This will make each unit strive towards the common future goal while working on short term individual

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