c-Leadership in new competitive environment

THE October issue of Harvard Business Review has a stirring cover page. Although it was 80 per cent white space, it still got me excited. "THE NEW RULES OF COMPETITION", screamed the title, scribbled in crimson red. The title was accompanied by three sub-bullet points that were instantaneously recognisable. They are the commandments of the latest business management theories - Be Paranoid, Disrupt Yourself, and Go to War for Talent (by A Grove, C Christensen and S Hankin respectively).

Did someone finally unearth a path out of this competitive, combustible and collapsing business climate? Regrettably no. The entire article was one that makes a case for radical thinking (yet again) and concluded with only a two pager on the sub-bullet topics.

But R Dobbs, T Koller and S Ramaswamy (from McKinsey; for convenience, we shall call them "DKR") strung along enough economic and financial data to convincingly explain how since the 1980s the multinational corporations (MNCs) have been able to increase their share of global gross domestic product by 30 per cent by leveraging their scale in a perfect non-storm environment. The problem is, momentum is now heading the other way. A storm is coming.