Identifying and Exploiting the Inter relationships between Technological and Marketing Capabilities

This paper deals with a fundamental challenge for decision makers - how to identify which firm capabilities to develop and which ones are no longer important in order to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. We propose an approach that measures technological and marketing capabilities in an integrated fashion, identifies core capabilities, explores their interrelationships and provides guidance for a dynamic technological and marketing strategy. The proposed methodology is illustrated by and applied to the case of Gorenje, a European manufacturer of household appliances, which faces the challenge of reconfiguring its existing capabilities to (re)gain a competitive advantage. The case study identifies two capabilities that integrate research and development with marketing and thereby create additional value. We show how to identify the integrative capabilities and how this integration takes place in Gorenje, while suggesting that Gorenje's strategy should be based on the co-ordinated development of the key core capabilities we identified. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.