Managing Discontinuities: The Emerging Challenges

The next millennium will witness dramatic changes in the competitive landscape. We can recognize at least eight significant discontinuities-global, deregulation, volatility, conveigence, indeterminate industry boundaries, standards, disintermediation, and eco-sensitivity-that must be managed simultaneously. These driving forces will impose new demands on managers who, in turn, will have to create new competencies. Managing these competencies in a multicultural environment is a complex task, one that will require managers to absorb and integrate new streams of knowledge, collaborate across cultures, "learn to forget," and deploy competencies across business unit boundaries. Mastering these competencies will require global firms to critically reexamine their existing competency profiles.