Competing for the Future

Hamel and Prahalad caution that complacent managers who get too comfortable in doing things the way they've always done will see their companies fall behind. For instance, the authors consider the battle between IBM and Apple in the 1970s. Entrenched as the leading mainframe-computer maker, IBM failed to see the potential market for personal computers. That left the door wide open for Apple, which envisioned a computer for every man, woman, and child. The authors write, "At worst, laggards follow the path of greatest familiarity. Challengers, on the other hand, follow the path of greatest opportunity, wherever it leads." They argue that business leaders need to be more than "maintenance engineers," worrying only about budget cutting, streamlining, re-engineering, and other old tactics. Definitely not for dilettantes, Competing for the Future is for managers who are serious getting their companies in front. -- Dan Ring

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

quite easily one of the best works in strategy, 2008-10-03
Quite easily one of the best works in strategy which helps sharpen thinking on key aspects like core competencies, strategic architecture, roadmaps to competing effectively in the future. This is a classic.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Still relevant, 2007-12-19
Although, written in 90's, this book provides an excellent insight in to planning and architecting the enterprises of future which is still relevant. Take an example of GEICO or Progressive of the Insurance world. Take a look at how they built an innovative distribution channels and made it their core competency. While their competition was comforted with old agency distribution model and now competition is trying to duplicate their core competency instead of thinking about future.


0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

good book, 2007-04-09
Like every business book, it has at least 100 pages more than what would have been necessary to get the idea.



0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Don't Ignore the Lessons in this Book..., 2006-02-11
"Gary Hamel is one of the brightest corporate strategist on the planet. And C.K. Prahalad is a brilliant business mind from the University of Michigan. Together, they have produced a profound book that will revitalize many companies. Those firms and organizations that ignore the new strategic architecture will be like `the deer caught in the headlights'... they will be doomed like many of the companies that have already disappeared from the ranks of the Fortune 1000."

-- Ko Hayashi
Managing Director, Chandler Leadership & Development, LLC www.corevaluetraining.com


9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

Don't be a bug on the windshield!, 2005-04-27
"On the road to the future, who will be the windshield, and who will be the bug?" - Gary Hamel

To be competitive in today's world, you must focus not only on the here and now, but also focus on creating the future because "Nothing is more liberating than becoming the author of one's on destiny."

Hamel and Prahalad deeply understand the very core of competition, and provide the reader with an understanding of how to build a great company.

Chapter 1: Getting Off the Treadmill
In addition to paying attention to their position in the current market, companies must focus more on creating the future of the industry and their stake in it.

Chapter 2: How Competition for the Future is Different
Competition for the future is competition to maximize the share of future opportunities.

Chapter 3: Learning to Forget
Unless a company wishes to meet the fate of the dinosaurs, it must stop looking in the rear view mirror.

Chapter 4: Competing for Industry Foresight
Industry foresight allows companies to envision ways of meeting unarticulated needs. Foresight arises from wanting to make a difference in people's lives.

Chapter 5: Crafting Strategic Architecture
"Not only must the future be imagined ... it must be built."
Strategic architecture is a set of plans on how to turn your dream into reality.

Chapter 6: Strategy as Stretch
"It is not cash that fuels the journey to the future, but the emotional and intellectual energy of every employee." Strategy must be built upon the juncture of where the firm is and where it wants to be.

Chapter 7: Strategy as Leverage
The real issue for many struggling managers is not a lack of resources, but too many priorities, too little stretch, and too little creative thinking about how to leverage resources.

Chapter 8: Competing to Shape the Future
Getting to the future first may empower a company to establish the rules by which other companies will have to compete.

Chapter 9: Building Gateways to the Future
Every top management team is competing not only to protect the firm's position within existing markets, but to position the firm to succeed in new markets.

Chapter 10: Embedding the Core Competence Perspective
All too often, opportunity that falls between the cracks of existing market and departmental definitions, gets overlooked.

Chapter 11: Securing the Future
What counts most is not hitting a bulls' eye the first time, but how quickly one can improve one's aim and get another arrow on the way to the target.

Chapter 12: Thinking Differently
"To ultimately 'be' different, a company must first 'think' differently." To share in the future, a company must learn as much about thinking differently as it does about what to do.


Competing for the Future is a lively study in how to transform today's dreams into tomorrow's reality. Don't read this book at your own peril. Competing today, without regard to tomorrow's possibilities will certainly stack the odds in your competitor's favor.

Michael Davis, President - Brencom Strategic Business Consulting

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