Competing for the Future (book review)

Competing for the Future
by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad

From the "Learning to Forget" chapter of this book:

To get to the future, a company must be willing to jettison, at least in part, it's past. Someone once remarked that "God created the world in six days, but He didn't have an installed base."
What part of our past can we use as a "pivot" to get to the future, and what part of our past represents excess baggage?

The best way to ensure that one is not at risk from more imaginative competitors is to be the first to conceive of alternate value delivery mechanisms, the first to cannibalize one's own producst and services, and the first to get to the future, even when that future undermines past success. As Andy Groves at Intel puts it, "You have to be your own toughest competitor."

The authors pay tribute to the influence of Peter Drucker in the preface of the book.

Some interesting sections of the book:

Could we sustain a debate for a full day about the implications of a trend that has the potential to transform our industry?

On getting to the future: Imagine having a foot on each of two parallel ladders - on called investment, the other industry foresight. The goal in competing for the future is to make sure each foot never gets more than a rung or two above the other. As additional insight into the best route to the opportunity is gained, investment commitments are escalated. If the foot on the investment ladder gets many rungs higher than the foot on the insight ladder, a fall is as likely (misdirected investment) as it would be if the foot on an understanding ladder got to far ahead of the foot on the commitment ladder (being preempted by a competitor).

On Stretch: defining leadership more appropriate to our fast-changing industry to provide employees with a new stretching ambition. Stretch gives birth to the motive for resource leverage.