Living in More Than One World

TWODeveloping Your Core Competencies

Leadership. . .rests on core competencies that meld market or customer value with a special ability of the producer or supplier. ²⁰

The concept of core competencies, originally developed at the organizational level, is increasingly being applied to individuals. Core competencies—what an organization can do better than others, or abilities that provide a particular competitive advantage—have been part of the business world’s vocabulary since the phrase was introduced in the early 1990s. The term is associated with the authors Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad, first from their 1990 article “The Core Competencies of the Corporation” in the Harvard Business Review, and later in their book Competing for the Future ...