Looking Inside for Competitive Advantage by Barney J, B
Summary
This article has emphasized on the internal set of factors of the famous SWOT analysis that is the internal strengths and weaknesses of a firm. The external set of factors includes the environmental analysis, the opportunities and threats. For a firm to be successful in gaining and sustaining competitive advantages, it is more important to develop and exploit its internal resources and capabilities than to only consider responding to external opportunities and threats. A firm’s internal resources include financial, physical, and human as well as organizational assets. These internal resources should be evaluated for competitive implications by answering to four questions. First question is that of value, if the firm’s internal resources add value by enabling it to exploit opportunities and neutralize threats. It is excellent if the answer comes as yes, however if it’s a no, then the firm must find new ways where these strengths and resources can be employed to add value. The second question is of rareness, if these internal resources exist rarely and are not commonly employed by other competitors. The third question to follow is of chances imitation. The competitors by way of either duplication or substitution can make this imitation of resources. The response to seek is that if the imitation of these internal resources will put the imitating competitor at a cost disadvantage or not. If it will, then the firm may enjoy a sustained competitive advantage. The historical background, superiority of making several small day-to-day decisions and socially complex resources make imitation costly. Last question is if the firm is organized in way of its reporting structure, compensation policies and control systems to fully exploit the competitive potential of its resources and capabilities. This article has emphasized all the points by illustrating examples of Xerox, Macintosh, Pepsi Co. and Coca Cola and Caterpillar.
Critique

This article has emphasized only on the internal set of factors of the SWOT, whereby to a great extent, if not completely, ignoring the external set of factors. Although the writer does mention these external opportunities and threats in one example or the other, or in one paragraph or the other, he has not given it as much of attention as it may deserve. I completely acknowledge the author’s treatment of a firm’s internal resources and capabilities; he may not have done it better. However in my opinion, the internal resources cannot be tested for competitive advantages without attending to the environmental analysis and not only current but also the forth-coming or anticipated opportunities and threats posed to the firm in particular, and the industry as a whole. Any internal resource, however competitive and profit generating may it be, cannot be of any good if the industry does not possess any potential for it, or if the threats posed are too enormous. I admit that in Macintosh example, the author has mentioned the external opportunity of future demand of user-friendliness in computers, recognized by the Macintosh, but the author has stressed more on the firm’s technological expertise, an internal resource, where the real strategy was an effort to exploit the opportunity of making computers user friendly in order to make them in just everyone’s use.

Strategic Intent by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad
Summary
This article has agreed upon the need and importance of strategic intent providing examples from global brands including Honda, Canon and Komatsu. The article has emphasized on the notion that businesses must never attempt to imitate or copy the strategies and tactics those pursued by their competitors. The logic is fairly simple. The competitors can easily trace out the next moves of those businesses and find a better way to wipe them off the face of the competition. The article further describes contrasting models of strategy followed by West and the Japanese, explaining how the West only emphasizes on maintaining the strategic fit while the Japanese aim to leverage the resources in order to find new ways for competition. The basic idea behind success and growth of any business is having a strategic intent rather than strategic planning. Strategic intent is more than just an ambition. It captures the essence of winning by setting a target that uses personal efforts and commitment, and is stable over time. The article finds making a strategic intent better than strategic planning because of the fact that the former tries to find ways to fold future into present, while the strategic planning only focuses on today’s problems instead of tomorrow’s opportunities. In order to compete in an innovative manner, the business can take up four ways: building layers of advantages, searching for loose bricks, changing the terms of engagement by not taking the accepted practices rather employing a contrasting strategy, and competing through collaboration. The article further advocates centralization since it rests the responsibility on the top management rather than the middle managers. However the competitive threats should be well communicated to all the levels of management, so that each employee knows what the company faces in terms of competition and can devise tactics on individual level.  
Critique
The article has mentioned the details of forming and maintaining strategic intent and competitive decisions and actions fairly well and with logical support. However the article discourages decentralization and promotes centralization, hence resting the responsibility of all actions on the top management. I personally believe that the middle managers and employees also must have some level of accountability and sense of autonomy. The flow of communication is even more difficult and complex in centralized organizations. When the top management makes any decisions and devises a strategy, then communicating it down and across various levels of management and employees requires very much accurate and speedy communication channels. In particular, when the business has a large portfolio and is operating internationally, streaming down the top management decisions and across will be rather an inefficient and ineffective to execute.
	Further the article also advocates strategic intent over strategic planning. I completely agree with the importance and significance of strategic intent and all the benefits that it extends. However, when the author undermines the importance of strategic planning by saying that a planner only focuses on today’s problems and ignores tomorrow’s opportunities, I have a disagreement with this.  In my opinion, if today’s problems are not solved properly and strategies not made to curb and avoid those problems in the years to come, how can a business successfully take up any opportunity in future? It is mandatory to make necessary reforms as and where the need be, in order to better prepare and gear up to exploit opportunities that are not even evidently existent as yet.