BNET Business Dictionary
Business Definition for: Core Competence
- a key ability or strength that an organization has acquired that differentiates it from others, gives it competitive advantage, and contributes to its long-term success. The concept of core competence is most closely associated with the work of Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad, notably in their book Competing for the Future (1994). They describe core competences as bundles of skills and technologies resulting from organizational learning. These provide access to markets, contribute to customer value, and are difficult for competitors to imitate. Core competence is a resource-based approach to corporate strategy. The terms core competence and core capability are often used interchangeably, but some writers make varying distinctions between the two concepts.
Additional Resources
- Has Your Company Lost Its Core Competence?
- The recession has inspired some companies to shed businesses and activities that are outside of their core competence. For example, Yahoo has refocused on selling display ads and being a portal for online content, forgoing search. This trend reflects the idea that companies' success comes from focusing on their core...
- Blog posts 2009-10-26
- Strategy, Core Competence And HR Involvement As Determinants Of HR Effectiveness And Refinery Performance
- TThis study examines the impact strategy, core competence, and involvement of HR executives in strategic decision making on the refinery managers' evaluation of the effectiveness of HR and refinery performance among 86 U.S. petro-chemical refineries. Survey results indicated that higher involvement of HR in organizational strategy is strongly related to...
- White papers 2003-01-01
- Sustainable Competitive Advantage with Core Competence : A Review
- AbstractThe potential of an organization's sustainable competitive advantage depends on the rareness and imitability of its resources and capabilities. The less imitable a competitive advantage is, the more cost disadvantage is faced by the competitor in imitating these competencies. Thus, core competence is an important source of sustained competitive advantage...
- Research articles 2002-12-01
- Project Management As A Core Corporate Competence
- Individuals developing as project managers need to develop not only the technical aspect of project management but also the attributes of a competent project manager, and combine it with business knowledge and leadership qualities. For corporations, developing project management as a core corporate competence includes making it part of how...
- White papers 2009-01-01
- Core Competencies
- Core competencies lead to the development of core products. Core products are not directly sold to end-users; rather, they are used to build a larger number of end-user products. The business units of the corporation each tap into the relatively few core products to develop a larger number of end...
- White papers 2003-01-01
- UU: concentrating on core competence
- Philip Green was feeling particularly pleased with himself yesterday. No, not that Philip Green, but the one who runs United Utilities. The share price has climbed from the moment he stepped into the chief executive's shoes from P&O Nedlloyd last April. While that's got quite a lot...
- Research articles 2006-12-06
- What Makes Silicon Valley Succeed?
- When you think of Silicon Valley, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Most likely it's something having to do with computers and the internet. But an intriguing article from today's NY Times reports that managers in the region have a more expansive idea of what they're all about:...
- Blog posts 2007-03-14
- Establishing a Strategic Partnering Relationship
- Strategic partnership agreements—whether short- or long-term—allow organizations to take advantage of market opportunities and respond to customer needs in collaboration, doing it more efficiently and effectively than they could alone."Collaboration is the process by which partners adopt a high level of purposeful cooperation to maintain a trading relationship over time....
- Articles 2007-11-19
- Kemira Oyj sets up Reach Competence Centre in Espoo
- NORDIC BUSINESS REPORT-19 December 2005-Kemira Oyj sets up Reach Competence Centre in EspooC1994-2005 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com Finnish chemicals company Kemira Oyj said on Friday (16 December) that it was setting up a Reach Competence Centre in connection with the company's Espoo Research Centre in Finland. The core...
- Research articles 2005-12-19
- Whole Foods executive advocates move to consumer-driven plans.(News)
- Byline: JERRY GEISEL WASHINGTON-Employers should stop offering traditional health insurance plans to their employees, says the top executive of one of the nation's best-known food markets. Unless employers have core competence in providing cover Byline: JERRY GEISEL WASHINGTON-Employers...
- Research articles 2005-02-07
- Standex International Corporation F2Q08 (Qtr End 12/31/08) Earnings Call Transcript
- Question-and-Answer Session Operator Your first question comes from John [Wathusen] – Wathusen and Co. John [Wathusen] – Wathusen and Co. On your engineered business the Orion project, you’re very specific about it but is that a one-time only project or is that just a first stage and...
- Earnings calls 2008-02-05
- Bank of America / Merrill Lynch Propose New Scenario for 'MicroHOO' Deal
- Third Party Feed: Media Tech Analyst submits: In a new twist on the Yahoo-Microsoft YHOO MSFT saga, analysts at Bank of America BAC / Merrill Lynch are proposing that Microsoft contribute their online services business and cash ($12bn-$21bn) to Yahoo in exchange for a 49% stake in the...
- External links 2009-02-12
- Institutionalizing neutrally competent policy analysis: resources for promoting objectivity and balance in consolidating democracies.(neutral competence )
- Introduction In broad sweep, Herbert Kaufman (1956) saw the evolution of American public administration as a quest for the core values of representativeness, executive leadership, and neutral competence. He defined neutral competence in public administration as the "ability to do the work of...
- Research articles 2005-05-01
- Competence-Based IT Outsourcing
- In an effort to re-focus on their core competences, an increasing number of companies outsource parts of their IT services. In this paper, based on Hamel and Prahalad's definition of core competences, numerous theoretical models for identifying and analyzing core competences were developed. However, at present, due to the high...
- White papers 2005-08-11
- How to Beat a Lower-Priced Competitor
- It's every company's nightmare: a competitor enters your market with a similar product priced at a fraction of what you currently charge. You need a strategy for beating the low-ballers. So what's the best way to proceed? On the one hand, all you need to do is...
- Articles 2007-06-14
- Expatriate Selection: Evaluating the Discriminant, Convergent, and Predictive Validity of Five Measures of Interpersonal and Intercultural Competence
- The study presented in this paper examined administrative work in business, schools, and universities, by using tabular review to compare the findings of selected studies on patterns of behavior. Results of analysis show in spite of differences in organizations and goals, there is considerable similarity in the daily work realities...
- White papers
- The Dark Side Of Outsourcing
- Outsourcing is considered as an effective strategy to cut costs and achieve economies of scale. By following the outsourcing strategy, an organization can focus on its core competence and leave the non-core work to the outsourced vendor. The paper discusses the negative areas in the outsourcing strategies. Some solutions for...
- White papers 2001-11-15
- Competing on Resources
- What gives your company a competitive edge? Your strategically valuable resources -- the ones enabling your enterprise to perform activities better or more cheaply than rivals. These can be physical assets a prime location, intangible assets...
- Articles 2008-08-20
- The Sales Rep is Dead.
- For years, American businesses have treated sales pros as second-class citizens. That's about to end, though, because in the future that's rapidly approaching, solution selling will become the soul of B2B commerce. And that's good news for the selling profession. Let me explain:The Internet transforms any product...
- Blog posts 2007-06-27
- How the Internet Changed Sales.
- The Internet made the business world go all weird, in ways that nobody expected. Probably the weirdest thing that happened was the transformation of product selling into consultative selling. It totally blindsided the conventional wisdom of the business pundits and made all of them look like fools. ...
- Blog posts 2007-10-22
