Strategy Dynamics Briefing 86: Multiple capabilities and organizational learning

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We have shown throughout this briefing series how performance arises from the complementary development of resources, leading to outcomes that reflect the power of the entire system, rather than the sum of individual elements (first outlined in Briefings 16-22). Adding capabilities to this understanding offers a still more powerful structure.

Any organization will possess capabilities linked to each of its main resources. It is therefore to be expected that learning on several of these would add still further to performance. ...

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Strategy Dynamics Briefing 83: Capabilities and learning

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‘Learning’ clearly implies ‘increasing capability’, but this Briefing clarifies how this mechanism actually works. First, we must distinguish this collective learning that grows an organization’s or team’s capability from the individual learning that adds to their personal skills. Briefing 26 explained how to capture the dynamics of the skills held by individuals in a call-center team – in simple terms, that model looked at how the number of specific skills of average team members is increased or depleted.

In contrast, ...

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Strategy Dynamics Briefing 81: What exactly are capabilities?

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Briefing 80 explained briefly that a capability is the ability to get something done – fast, well and cheaply. To clarify the difference between resources and capabilities it is worth noting the same classification of asset stocks we used when explaining intangible resources in Briefing 73 (Figure 1).

Figure 1: A classification of resources and capabilities. (Click image to view larger)

A classification of resources and capabilities

Capabilities are asset-stocks, but not resources. They accumulate ...

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Strategy Dynamics Briefing 77: Information-based resources

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The inclusion of data and knowledge in the strategic architecture reflects the existence of two classes of entity — the “material” factors we have dealt with as tangible resources, and “informational” factors that also can be collected, lost, stored and used. The simplest informational factor is just data—specific pieces of information about something of importance. This can be illustrated by extending the call-center example from Briefing 27. At that point, we looked at the staff skills required to serve customers ...

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Strategy Dynamics Briefing 73: Intangible resources – getting some clarity

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We all know that ‘soft’ factors are important – we need motivation amongst our staff, reputation with potential customers, effective processes to get things done, good data that is up to date, and powerful capabilities for developing products, for example. Unfortunately, there is little agreement in strategy books and articles on what those soft items actually are, the categories into which they fall, or how they can be specified and measured.

We will spare you the review and analysis of ...

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