【正文】 ket, with million customers and $ billion in revenues in 1995.Both panies created protected and stimulating environments in which the new petences were able to flourish. These environments were bounded not by fire walls, but by oneway membranes that allowed the incubator to beg, borrow, or steal people and practices from the main business, while not being bound by its rules. Brown amp。 Root leveraged its existing project engineering petence in its new logistics business, but broke house rules within the incubator in a way that would not have been tolerated in the main organization. It used aggressive performancebased management approaches and freely adapted and cannibalized parent systems.As in the evolutionary approach, panies using incubation will rely on outsiders. While in the former case the imperative is to hire in sufficient numbers to counteract organizational inertia, in the latter it is to garner the needed skills as quickly and efficiently as possible. When Southwestern Bell39。s cellular division needed longdistance expertise, it hired not from the big three panies, but from the petitive longdistance resellers with streetfighter mercial skills.Both Southwestern Bell and Brown amp。 Root focused on specific new business opportunities, not on building petence in the abstract. Their incubators were managed not by petence stewards or knowledge leaders, but by business executives looking for bottomline results. They employed simple performance metrics that measured the strength of their petences against external benchmarks, and concentrated pragmatically on delivering business results in a challenging new environment. Brown amp。 Root set up its logistics operation at a time when the main business, hit by the oil price slump, was losing close to $1 million per day. Arthur Stephens, CEO of the new venture, confessed, All of our futures were on the line. It was made very clear to us that we needed to build a successful business out of this concept.AcquisitionManagers often resort to acquisition out of frustration with the time and effort involved in evolution or incubation: witness the number of acquisitions performed in recent years for the primary purpose of obtaining skills. In reality, however, acquisition is more likely to fail than either of the other approaches. To improve their chances of success, managers must understand how the type of petence they seek affects their acquisition strategy, and be aware of the structural factors that will influence the oute.In general, a strategy to acquire frontline execution skills is a safer bet than one concerned with insight/foresight. In the former, a raft of plementary organizational systems (for instance, incentive and knowledge systems) supports and promotes the petence behavior. Even if some people leave after the acquisition, these systems will tend to replicate the petence behavior in new hires. In the case of insight/foresight, however, key individuals who leave the pany take their skills with them, and are extremely difficult to replace.Structurally, petencedriven acquisitions are more often successful when the acquired pany is not fully integrated into the acquirer, but retains some autonomy. With frontline execution, it is vital to retain all the organizational systems that underpin the petence behavior, at least until the drivers of the petence are understood. Full integration may disrupt or even demolish these systems. In the case of insight/foresight petences, it is important to bear in mind that the acquired pany39。s existing organizational arrangements may have persuaded talented individuals to join it. Rapid changes could make them leave. One professional services firm found that over 90 percent of the managers of the pany it acquired left within two years of full integration.Choosing the approachWhile the availability of suitable panies to buy is often the deciding factor in the acquisition approach, choosing between evolution and incubation is a more subtle affair. Usually, though, the decision hinges on a tradeoff. Under the evolutionary approach, it may be harder to create a superior petence, but success will automatically affect the core of the pany. On the other hand, the chances of building a new petence are probably better with the incubator approach, but bringing that skill into the rest of the pany may pose great difficulty.Past successes with major change programs will favor evolution。 a track record of skunkworks, incubationThe nature of the firm and the petence will bear on this tradeoff. Past successes with major change programs will favor evolution。 a track record of skunk works, incubation. Frontline execution petences may be best suited to evolutionary development, since their success depends on the efforts of many people across an organization. Conversely, insight/foresight petences may thrive in an incubator setup that can exploit the advantages of smaller groups and less formal processes.Sustaining and enhancing core petencesCompanies that already possess a superior petence can turn their attention to ensuring its sustainability and enhancing its value. At the most basic level, this means making sure it does not degrade over time through inattention. There are two mon causes for such a problem.First, skilled staff can gradually drift away. While this is usually obvious when it happens to an insight/foresight petence, it can be equally devastating with a frontline execution petence. Losses may go unnoticed until they reach epidemic proportions. One division of a pany with a frontline execution petence had a reputation for developing the firm39。s best managers. It had always supplied talent to other divisions, but at one point the transfers increased substantially. At the same time, petitors launched a raid. By the time the bined effects were noticed, the division had lost over 25 percent of its most promising future managers.Second, a petence can decline when many staff and line