In the early 1990 professor Richard D’Aveni developed the concept of hypercompetition, highlighting the fact companies nowadays compete in turbulent, constantly transforming world, where it is more or less impossible to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. D’Aveni was not the only academic to note that the more stable Porterian world no longer existed, and more and more business thinkers started talking about the need for strategy innovation, strategic flexibility, and more recently, resilience.
The most important contribution of management in the 21st century will be to increase knowledge worker productivity – hopefully by the same percentage. Peter Drucker, 1999
But is there a single formula for success in present-days more thought-driven and hypercompetitive business environments, and if so, what’s it like? In the midst of the Internet-hype we started a research journey hunting for this Holy Grail of the 21st Century business. We’ve studied thousands of peer-reviewed academic articles, read tons of books and magazine articles, surveyed thousands of executives and hundreds of thousands of employees across the globe, and have found, if not the “formula”, so at least a few building blocks that seem to be fundamental to success in most industries. In collaboration with one of the leading global technology companies we also developed an instrument aimed to measure the organizational performance in each and every “building block”.
We labeled the concept “21st Century Management”; the benchmark and development instrument we called Future Capital Analysis. And we continue to develop new insights through intense collaboration with partners and clients that are eager to improve their ability to navigate in and create the future.
Did you know, that having a systematic process to “scan the business landscape” and to “turn insight into innovation” are two of the very most important drivers of success today? Lindgren, 21st Century Management