Competing for the Future

Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad argue that strategy must do more than optimise today’s industry position. Firms compete to shape emerging opportunities by developing foresight, sustaining strategic intent and building core competencies that can be leveraged across products and markets.

The book shifts attention from existing resources to the capabilities an organisation must learn to create. Strategic intent provides a stretching direction, while core competencies explain how accumulated skills and technologies can open multiple paths to future growth.

For executives, the framework encourages investment ahead of obvious demand and challenges planning anchored only in current market share. The risk is agenda proliferation: an inspiring future can generate too many initiatives unless capability bets, milestones and resource limits are explicit.

OutcomesLab profiles Competing for the Future because it balances present focus with purposeful renewal. It links Capability Compounding and Strategic Momentum with Optionality—the disciplined preservation of credible future choices.