Operations have always been, and remain, crucial to achieving a competitive advantage. Tim Cook, who has created more shareholder value than any other CEO at any other company, is an operations specialist. Indeed, he believes that being innovative in operations was crucial to Apple’s success even when the visionary, Steve Jobs was at the company’s helm.
Operations in an Era of Radical Uncertainty
To maintain competitive advantage in a multi-crisis world, operations and strategy must become even more intertwined.
October 02, 2023
Yaroslav Danylchenko/Stocksy
Summary.
Operations have always been foundational to competitive advantage, but the nature of this relationship is shifting: Historically, the strategic goal of operations was to achieve scale in order to create a sustainable efficiency advantage. In recent years, winners have focused more on ensuring their operations and strategies were adaptive to changing and unforeseen circumstances, with resilience driving outperformance. In the era of radical uncertainty we are now entering, the next frontier of operations will be to enable optionality, which entails an even closer integration with strategy.