The Dynamic Capabilities Framework, originally developed to enhance understanding of strategic agility in high-tech firms operating in high-velocity markets, is shown to be relevant for the Upstream Oil and Gas sector, in the context of five industry game-changers. Here operational and general managers with key strategic decision-making responsibilities significant challenges created by increased demand for energy resources, new technologies that have opened unconventional plays, increased competition, shrinking global geoscience and engineering talent pools, and the reality and perception of environmental risks. The Dynamic Capabilities Framework is distinguished from other “textbook” strategic methodologies and is applied to today’s upstream strategic context and inflection point. Dynamic capabilities join with strategy to empower an organization’s ability to integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external competencies to address rapidly changing markets. Dynamic capabilities differ from ordinary capabilities in that they orchestrate clusters of ordinary capabilities, best practices and competencies to gain competitive and performance advantages – capturing opportunities and managing strategic risks. Three dynamic capabilities are described that have particular importance for upstream oil and gas companies in the new business environment: (1) ambidexterity across mature and emerging domains; (2) the ability to manage the upstream business ecosystem; and (3) the ability to manage Health, Safety, Security and Environmental (HSSE) considerations in the multinational corporation and throughout the business ecosystem.

Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how does it make money? This concise guide explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve your company's bottom line. Whether you're an executive plotting the next move, a small business owner looking to expand, or an entrepreneur planning a startup, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide illustrates through real-life examples how businesses, large and small, are creating new opportunities on today's Web. This book is about strategy. Rather than focus on the technology, the examples concentrate on its effect. You will learn that creating a Web 2.0 business, or integrating Web 2.0 strategies with your existing business, means creating places online where people like to come together to share what they think, see, and do. When people come together over the Web, the result can be much more than the sum of the parts. The customers themselves help build the site, as old-fashioned "word of mouth" becomes hypergrowth. Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide demonstrates the power of this new paradigm by examining how: Flickr, a classic user-driven business, created value for itself by helping users create their own value Google made money with a model based on free search, and changed the rules for doing business on the Web-opening opportunities you can take advantage of Social network effects can support a business-ever wonder how FaceBook grew so quickly? Businesses like Amazon tap into the Web as a source of indirect revenue, using creative new approaches to monetize the investments they've made in the Web Written by Amy Shuen, an authority on Silicon Valley business models and innovation economics, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide explains how to transform yourbusiness by looking at specific practices for integrating Web 2.0 with what you do. If you're executing business strategy and want to know how the Web is changing business, this book is for you.

Abstract The chapter tries to conceptualize different forms of competence and relate them to both organization theory and strategic management. A general premise is that organizations embody coherent structures of tasks and competences, with distinctive governance modes, which do not replicate either pure market arrangements or any ‘nexus of contracts’. The authors identify the specificities of each firm in terms of (1) organizational processes (including their operating routines), (2) positions (broadly defined to cover their specific assets, their location along the value chain, and their relationships with suppliers and customers), and (3) paths (i.e. their patterns of change in the former two sets of characteristics). The chapter emphasizes the stickiness over time of distinct organizational capabilities and, thus, also the constraints that the past learning history of the organization puts upon the degrees of discretionality of strategic management. This perspective on organizations and organizational learning clearly shifts the focus of analysis from rather product positioning or ‘clever strategizing’ to the process of problem‐solving and organizational governance, and, dynamically, to competence‐enhancing strategies.