Development and application of core competencies from a technology management point of view

Abstract

The dominant and most important question in strategic management can be formulated as follows: How can a company achieve superior corporate performance in the face of competition? Over the course of the last decade the assumption evolved that core competencies are essential to the firms' competitiveness. Can core competencies be planned or are they coincidental? This paper is rooted in the belief that core competencies can be planned with the same restrictions that apply to all innovation activities: there are several mandatory conditions to successfully develop core competencies. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for the development of (technological) core competencies. Based on the view of the process school of the resource-based view of the firm, a framework to build core competencies is derived and implemented in several New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs).