The Hindu Business Line : <I>Dispersed competence </I>

The relevance of corporates developing core competencies and building their business around them as a way of acquiring competitive advantage was at one time taken as indisputable. No longer. Perceptive managers with hands-on experience of running organisations have realised that being stuck on one or two areas of the so-called core competency works against bright and fertile minds exploiting their future growth potential to full advantage. It also deprives the organisation of the full range of savings and benefits inherent in multi-tasking.

In a country or context demanding economic expansion in several directions, on several planes and dimensions, in short order, diversification under, say, a holding company, provides the best opportunity to make available multiple goods and services from the same source within a short time, helped along by economies of scale and homogeneity in performance parameters. Also, even in outwardly unrelated activities, there are surprising complementarities. Innovations of an extraordinarily creative intelligence, they are tremendously capable of boosting sales and earning goodwill.

Is there, at first sight, anything in common, for instance, between petrol bunks and pizzerias; motels and menageries; hotels and astrologers; hospitals and bookshops; workplaces and creches; departmental stores and gyms? Or, take the music sabhas of Chennai with the cafeterias as their adjuncts. It is sometimes hard to make out whether the hundreds of patrons visiting the sabhas do so for the music or the masala dosas!

Beyond any doubt, managements opt for these incongruous combinations only because they find that it pays to tag on to the main enterprise a service or facility that appeals to, and attracts, a much larger clientele than it would do otherwise. In the process, they ride two or three horses with great skill.

There is no need to labour the proposition: The future lies in dispersed and complementary competency.

B.S. RAGHAVAN