Boars, Bears and Core Competencies

Being an omnivore is a winning strategy for bears and boars. Does the same logic work for business corporations?

Most management thinkers like corporations to be specialists (like anteaters) rather than omnivores (like boars or bears). CK Prahalad and Gary Hamel, the Core Competency gurus, usually advise businesses to stick to their knitting, do what they do best, and buy the rest on the market. This is not an especially new idea. Think back to Adam Smith’s pin factory or David Ricardo exhorting Portugal to stick with making wine and buy English cloth. Specialization leads to efficiency, which raises productivity and therefore incomes.

But are specialists too fragile? If one wants to think about businesses as institutions which are meant to be resilient to the madness which sometimes infects markets, maybe boars and bears are better role models than anteaters, hummingbirds or cheetah.