They can innovate by trying to lower their costs, or produce more value or whatever. This is called reactive innovation. Those innovations, however, do result in economic growth. Therefore you have this dynamic process that must continue, because you get rewarded for relative performance, not on absolute performance. Hunt maintains that even the businesses seemingly on top of the game still need to innovate, or they face stagnation.
Most companies think only in terms of one dynamic.
The guys on the top are in a favored position and want to stay there. The book has evolved over a period of about six years, according to Hunt. In 1994, he and then doctoral student Robert Morgan set out to answer the question of why some firms are more profitable than others. In the course of their research they developed the new theory. The book has been extremely well received by many disciplines.