Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage (1)

Filed in archive Book Review on August 16, 2006

The heading above is the title of one of the best books which I have ever read in the area of strategy and supply chain management.

The book is not new but it´s definitely a masterpiece. It´s been written by Charles Fine of MIT and it´s been published first in 1998.

In this first part, I´m going to give you the basic idea of the book. The author starts by explaining how genetic scientists study life of fruit flies to see the changes through the generations and then extend them to changes in human generations. The rationale behind studying fruit flies instead of studying humans themselves is that fruit flies have much shorter life and this makes study of the changes easier.

Charles Fine argues that the same concept can be applied to business world and by studying ¨fast clockspeed¨industries, the ones with extremely fast industry evolution rate e.g. computer industry, we can gain valuable insights about what is going on in slow clockspeed industries such as automobiles.

The author believes that it does not exist such thing as sustainable competitive advantage anymore but temporary advantage and, in this new situation, the ultimate core capability is supply chain design!