Execution still matters, scale of certain kinds still matters, customer relationships still matter.
Just because Dell or Cisco or The Body Shop did things well in the past in no way promises that they will be winning a year or two from now. The corporate scorecard is often bleak, and the numbers don't lie. These sorts of strategic moves fly in the face of corporate culture in most settings, so a large chunk of the book is devoted to the soft skills of real people who can in fact make change happen. We're in a transition period. The whole industry's gotten tougher.