Gary Hamel

Assignment 2

In 1989, Gary Hamel and C.K Prahalad two famous professor write an article about the “ strategic intent “ and published this article in the Harvard Business Review that create a shock in the world of business. With the idea: if a business wants to achieve success in the market, she had to connect its ends to its means with a strategic intent. For Hamel and Prahalad Strategic Intent is the obsession of a company to win and successes in the market. This company put a high and difficult ambitions for its capabilities that want to achieve in the future and be a market leader.  To analyse and know more about this article we will try to answer to the following question:

The effect and the importance of the “Strategic Intent” in a firm?

What are the four approaches to competitive innovation and what is his utilities in an organization?

How to use the “strategic intent” in a business?

In this article Hamel and Prahalad talk and difference between strategic intent and traditional strategy to make clear this to strategy for us. They say that traditional strategy focusses on three thinks. First one is the link between the resources existing and the actual opportunities and looking for a sustainable advantage and searching for a safety place. But for the strategic intent they say that she creates an inadequate connection between the resources and the ambitions of the business or the firm and surpass its competitors and concurrent with the construction of a new advantages.  

The Strategic Intent is a strategy among other strategies like (strategic fit, strategy hierarchy, generic strategies …), that affect the firm in different way. Firstly, Strategic Intent help a firm to achieve his many obsessions in the mark without thinking in its capabilities and resources, in other words she helps to win, develop and changes in all levels of the company. Secondly, he motives and incite the employees of the firm to work hard and efficiently to achieve the objectives set by the organization and help the firm in his obsessions. Finally, the strategic intent set a big and huge goals and objectives for a long-term period (global leadership, market leader, renowned firm …) for the firm to be constantly in challenge and to be stable over time. Hamel and Prahalad give the example of Canon company in the reprographics that use the strategic Intent in his plan to beat the Xerox company that have $4 billon power horse.  We can say that the strategic intent is a performing way that help a firm to achieve and develop his high future goals without thinking to its resources.

The two professors Hamel and Prahalad say that for a brilliant competitors, the objectives is not the competitive imitation ( to imitate the service or product that the competitors give or make ), but to use the competitive innovation ( the art of containing competitive risks within manageable proportions ), and they established four approaches to use the competitive innovation in a organization. The first one is the “ Building layers of advantages “ means that a firm have to create many opportunity to build a advantages over these competitor. The second one is “Searching for loose bricks “ is the capabilities to found the weaknesses and feebleness of the competitors to use it. The third is “ Changing the terms of engagement “ is to re-establish a new commitment with a new adequate terms. The last one is “Competing through collaboration “ is to competitive with the other firm’s with the way of cooperation. These four approaches are famous in the Japanese companies, she helps him to reach the global place. These approaches help an organization in his ambition to achieve them and to have a big place in the market.

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