Is the business world moving too fast for strategy to keep up? Rita McGrath, of Columbia Business School, essentially asks that question in this month’s Spotlight. The big shifts in the world economy—the digital revolution, lowered barriers to entry, globalization—combine to make it nearly impossible for companies to maintain truly lasting competitive advantage. As a result, she argues, companies need to constantly launch strategic initiatives so that they can exploit “transient” advantages before they disappear. Stability, McGrath shows, is no longer the norm. In fact, it isn’t even the goal. The imperative now is to perpetually innovate, creating a portfolio of advantages that can be built quickly and abandoned just as fast. And what about Michael Porter’s five forces? Michael Ryall, of the Rotman School of Management, contends that strategy is moving beyond Porter’s 1979 framework. In fact, Ryall suggests that an even more enduring model could evolve from a relatively obscure 1996 academic paper that created the basis for predictive mathematical modeling of strategic decisions. Also in the Spotlight, Todd Zenger, of Olin Business School, stresses that the aim of strategy isn’t really to gain competitive advantage—it’s to develop an approach for continually creating value. To illustrate his argument, Zenger reproduces a wonderful 1957 map depicting the vision of Walt Disney himself, who saw that a big entertainment empire could best evolve by purposefully developing synergies among its various offerings. The world may indeed be changing quickly, but sometimes the best insights just need to be refreshed for a new era. Adi Ignatius, Editor in Chief
