Wharton Professor Interviews Business Strategists

Wharton Professor of Legal Studies Kevin Werbach interviewed former McKinsey Consultant John Hagel III and former Xerox Chief Scientist John Seeley Brown about the ideas at the center of their new book, The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization. Don’t let the buzzwordy title scare you. While Hagel’s and Brown’s ideas on capability building, process networks and the edge of the enterprise as communicated in the interview can be lofty, they are thought-provoking.

Hegel and Brown get more concrete and provocative when they discuss, about halfway through the interview, the technology infrastructure for coordinating business activities that take place at the edge of the enterprise among a variety of partners and the limitations of service oriented architecture. Hegel sees the focus of IT shifting from automating business processes to enhancing best practices and the ability to get people together to addresss problems and exceptions in the business. It’s worth reading when you have 10 minutes.

—Meridith Levinson