How will companies thrive in the new New Economy? By forgoing incremental improvements and embracing radical, business-model-shattering change. So says Gary Hamel, 46, chairman of Strategos, a consulting company in Menlo Park, Calif. "Over the next decade, companies that want to be wealth-creating superstars are really going to have to come up with fundamentally new ideas," says Hamel.
What kinds of ideas? He says that CNN's all-news programming and Walt Disney Co.'s cruise business are examples of radical innovation that broke the mold for their industries. In the long term, Hamel says, he's bullish about the nation's prospects for growth. However, he says the forces behind the 1990s boom--technology spending and restructuring--have reached their limits, making innovation crucial. The bespectacled strategy guru has been shaking up complacent businesses for years and has developed an almost cultlike following by warning companies of the dangers of downsizing and by introducing such concepts as "core competencies." Now Hamel is preaching the gospel of innovation.
By Louis Lavelle in New York
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