C..C..C.....

Competence in business is essential - but is it enough? If your strategy for survival is that you continue to be more competent than your competitors, is that enough? What happens when your competitiors catch up and also become competent? You cannot really become 'super competent'. Competence is a condition you gradually approach. You can indeed continue to make small improvement - and so can your competitiors.

In the future three things are going to be needed in business. In the English language they all start with 'C'. So we have the three 'C's.

1. Cash
2. Competence
3. Creativity

You can indeed find special circumstances where one or other of these is not essential. For example in a huge market with few players, then cash and competence will allow you to do exactly what the others players are doing and still get a share of the market. But, on the whole, all three are important.

Cash is the fuel in the car. Competence is the engineering competence of the car. Creativity is the driver's choice of destination.

Many organsiations claim that they are not short of ideas and have more than they can handle. Yet surveys show that the biggest barrier to innovation is simply lack of new ideas. Just as advertising is usually outsourced because organisations feel they cannot have all the creative talent in-house, so the same will (partially) apply to idea generation.

For this reason I have set up a consortium to provide comprehensive and experienced creativity (Saatchi for ideas and communication, Ernst and Young for analysis and creativity, DMR for software/IT and creativity, Shine for public relations/youth market and creativity - and myself).

Most organisations greatly underuse their assets: talented people, competent infrastructure, brand image, know-how, market position, distribution system etc.

There is always a need to choose and tailor the ideas that suit your organisation. Organisations need to set up an 'ideas liason office' to deal with idea sources.

Edward de Bono nmt
5th Novemebr 2000
Hong Kong

The de Bono Code website