Duke Research Advantage

This is the third in a series of posts by Duke Strategy Professors Arie Lewin and Marco Huesch.

We temper our advice by noting that while the future business landscape is unlikely to resemble that of the past, your firm must of course still be able to get there from here. To do so, you will still need many of those processes that make you successful today. In fact, you may still be able to leverage those processes to make you a leader tomorrow. Clearly, your experimentation with innovation should not come at the expense of failing to whittle down, refine, sharpen and polish your current execution strengths.

With the fine print out of the way, our closing thoughts are that what is good for firms who successfully follow these maxims is also good for America. We echo the words of GE boss Jeff Immelt, who recently advised that the “companies and countries that really play offence vis-à-vis technology and innovation are going to come out ahead,” We share the enthusiasm of national colleagues – Amar Bhidé, Glen Hubbard, and Ned Phelps among others – who see such innovative changes as ‘non-destructive creation’. Given the option between Schumpeterian ‘creative destruction’ and the above alternative, the choice should be clear for our business leaders.