The Creation Of Competitiveness Through Strategy

It is widely accepted that a business' core competences contribute to its competitive advantage.This is only a static view of a company's competitive advantage and its core competences at that moment.However,there were companies with unique core competences and successful records but still failed in fierce market competition.This reflects a fact that core competences do not guarantee competitive advantage in market competition.Some scholars came up with the theory of Dynamic Capability which addresses the capabilities of learning, adapting,and upgrading core competences in response to environment changes.Dynamic capability only explained the short term evolution of a company's core competences in a reactive mode to market changes.However,the long term successes of many companies indicated that they can proactively prepare new core competences that they deem essential to their future successes.This study extended a company's core competences from a static view,and a short term adapting perspective,to a long term evolutionary perspective.At different point in time,a company should possess a different set of core competences sufficient to offer the company competitive advantage in deliberately selected target markets.In order for this company to succeed in the next market,a growth strategy must be constructed with considerations of existing core competences,existing resource availability,selected new target market,required core competences to succeed in this new market,and the forecast of the economic environment when launching the next phase campaign for the new market.Hon Hai Precision Corporation was founded in 1974 and has become the world's number one Electronic Manufacturing Service(EMS) provider.Hon Hai has always selected its target market and has prepared,in advance,for its new core competences accordingly.Hon Hai was used as a case to demonstrate the model of long term evolution of core competences.