Time—The Next Source of Competitive Advantage资料.pdf

Time - The Next Source of Competitive Advantage George Stalk Jr Boston Consulting Group 6,699 words 1 August 1988 Harvard Business Review p 41 ISSN Number: 0017-8012 English Copyright (c) 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. Like competition itself, competitive advantage is a constantly moving target. For any company in any industry, the key is not to get stuck with a single simple notion of its source of advantage. The best competitors, the most successful ones, know how to keep moving and always stay on the cutting edge. Today, time is on the cutting edge. The ways leading companies manage time--in production, in new product development and introduction, in sales and distribution--represent the most powerful new sources of competitive advantage. Though certain Western companies are pursuing these advantages, Japanese experience and practice provide the most instructive examples--not because they are necessarily unique but because they best illustrate the evolutionary stages through which leading companies have advanced. In the period immediately following World War II, Japanese companies used their low labor costs to gain entry to various industries. As wage rates rose and technology became more significant, the Japanese shifted first to scale-based strategies and then to focused factories to achieve advantage. The advent of just-in-time production brought with it a move to flexible factories, as leading Japanese companies sought both low cost and great variety in the market. Cutting-edge Japanese companies today are capitalizing on time as a critical source of competitive advantage: shortening the planning loop in the product development cycle and trimming process time in the factory-- managing time the way most companies manage costs, quality, or inventory. In fact, as a strategic weapon, time is the equivalent of money, productivity, quality, even innovation. Managing time has enabled top Japan