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Skating to where the Money Will be
註釋History repeatedly has shown that what appeared to be unassailable competitive advantages at one point have become disadvantages at another. For example, in the automobile industry Henry Ford's focus has been touted right next to General Motors' product line breadth as keys to those companies' success at different points in their industry's history. More recently in the computer industry, the outsourcing flexibility inherent in the non-integrated business models of Cisco and Dell have been held up as models for all to emulate whereas a generation ago IBM's vertical integration was widely known to be an unassailable source of competitive advantage. With alarming regularity, yesterday's paradigm shift has become today's outmoded dogma as companies seem consistently unable to match their behaviors to changing market demands. It is perhaps in part for this reason that few companies sustain unusually attractive levels of profitability for any significant period of time. In the face of the fact that few competitive advantages are everlasting, ice hockey great Wayne Gretzky's observation on the source of his enduring success is potentially salutary. He suggested that his advantage was not in skating faster or shooting harder than anyone else. It was in his uncanny ability to skate to the place where the puck is going to be, not to the place where the puck presently is.