CONCEPT
From Resource Allocation to Opportunity Creation
The paradigm shift Prahalad demanded of corporate strategy — from distributing scarce resources across known opportunities to creating opportunities that do not yet exist through the development of capabilities the organization does not yet possess.
The shift from resource allocation to opportunity creation is the strategic reframing Prahalad insisted was the essential task of twenty-first century corporate leadership. The paradigm that has governed corporate strategy for half a century rests on a single verb: allocate. The central task of the strategist is to distribute scarce resources across a portfolio of known opportunities to maximize return. Prahalad argued that this paradigm, however internally coherent, was strategically insufficient. Resource allocation optimizes within known boundaries and produces efficiency. It does not produce the future. The future is produced by a different verb: create.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The allocation response to the twenty-fold AI productivity multiplier is headcount arithmetic: given a known body of work, how few people are needed? The creation response asks a fundamentally different question: given an unprecedented expansion of what is possible, what new work should exist that has not yet