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How can we apply our current strengths and
competencies to take a leading role in the best,
most profitable markets of the future?

Strengths bring in revenues and profits when they are intelligently applied
in the real world. In this question Gary Hamel and Chris Prahalad are
again virtually forecasting Arie de Geus’s much later findings. Companies
that survive and prosper are those that apply their strengths flexibly in a
volatile business environment. They never re-invent the wheel for the sake
of novelty. Their primary strategy is always to use what they have already
proved to be of value in the real world of business. They are frugal in their
approach to change for change’s sake and they are frugal in their use of
resources. They are not averse to change. They change when change is dic-
tated by the changing desires of their customers. This approach and the
question that drives it enables them to build prosperity and conserve
resources until the need to invest is compelling. Then they have a massive
advantage over those who have failed to ask the right questions and have
been profligate to the point that they cannot even afford to spend what
they must to prosper in changing circumstances.

As usual this question, like people named in the Bible, begets others
that are equally valid.

Beyond the organization

n What will be the most profitable markets of the future?
n Which will be the easiest for us to exploit?
n How will we know when it is time to change direction?

Within the business

n How can we be sure that we take all our people with us?
n What specific steps should we take to minimize risk?
n How do we maximize the return on our growing resources,

financial and otherwise, in the meantime?

xviii Introduction