Thinkers 50 Strategy: The Art and Science of Strategy Creation and Execution

CHAPTER3

Getting to the Core

By the end of 1980s, the strategic management world was in a rut. Strategic positioning went some way toward explaining the difference in performance of apparently similar companies in similar markets, yet there was something lacking. A large part of the puzzle was still unaccounted for. Instead of looking outward at the world from the organizations, strategists began to look inward, at the firm’s resources. It was the beginning of a new phase: resource-based strategy.

Many people would eventually contribute to the development of the resource-based view of strategic management. Economists had already described firms as a set of resources, with Edith Penrose’s work on the growth of the firm in the late 1950s and Birger ...