Resilience: Continuous renewal of competitive advantages
Resilience: Continuous renewal of competitive advantages
Even in these financially challenging times, business performance alwayscomes down to a firm’s competitive advantages. Subsequently, how can companiessustain a long-run competitive advantage, especially in the face of increasing competi-tion? Apart from the pat answer that innovation is critical to organizational survival, weargue that it is the innovation process and how companies manage it that forms thefoundation of a resilient organization. Our research finds that organizational innovationprocesses take three main forms: reactive, proactive, and anticipatory innovators. It isfrom anticipatory innovators that resilient organizations emerge. Here, resilient orga-nizations not only anticipate the needs of buyers but do so by creating an innovationorientation within the firm’s culture. This culture-based focus goes beyond any specificinnovation; it directs leaders to create an organizational culture that is receptive toinnovative ideas and to the changes they produce. Here, the competitive advantage isnot so much innovation per se but the organization’s ability to continuously createcompetitive advantages based on innovations.#