THE ONLY SUSTAINABLE EDGE

In an attempt to shave costs and reduce operating expenses, many firms have used outsourcing and offshoring. But as opportunities for innovation and growth migrate to the peripheries of companies, industries, and the global economy, efficiency will no longer be enough to sustain competitive advantage. In The Only Sustainable Edge, renowned business thinkers John Hagel and John Seely Brown argue that the only sustainable advantage in the future will come from an institutional capacity to work closely with other highly specialized firms to get better faster. Enabled by the emergence of global process networks, firms will undergo a three-stage transformation: deepening specialization within firms, mobilizing best-in-class capabilities across enterprises and, ultimately, accelerating learning across broad networks of enterprises. Hagel and Seely Brown discuss the strategic levers that will accelerate this migration, and they outline a new approach to strategy development that will help companies capture this shifting source of strategic advantage. Calling for a forceful reinvention of business strategy and the very nature of the firm itself, this bold and forward-looking book reveals what every company must do today to become tomorrow's market leader. Hagel III is a business strategist and former McKinsey & Co. consultant who has advised senior executives around the world for 25 years. Seely Brown is the former chief scientist of Xerox Corp. and served as director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for 12 years.