Those four activities that you mentioned are characteristic of almost any firm. What I attempt to do in the book is to show that it is the way those activities are managed that differentiates innovative firms from non-innovative firms. Let me focus on the final activity. Your point seems to be that companies often don t have the skills and knowledge internally to cope with today s rapidly changing markets. I think both of those are important to avoiding core rigidities because in both cases what you are trying to do is challenge the well-worn channels through which knowledge flows into your company.
Companies rely on the knowledge of other firms because their needs are becoming ever more complex.
So that drives us to look for sources of expertise outside the company and to make alliances with companies that have complementary skills. But it certainly seems increasingly true that we need to have alliances with other companies to develop products that are systems-based. One of the activities I mentioned is scanning broadly. Technical knowledge comes from all over the world. I think we could learn something from the Japanese, who do extremely well in this regard.