New Organizational Forms and Strategies for Managing in Hypercompetitive Environments

Strong forces of change—globalization, demographic shifts (e.g., aging population and declining fertility rates), advances in information technology, demassification of society, and hypercompetition—are reshaping the competitive landscape worldwide. As a result, companies in most industries are not only undergoing rapid and radical change, but are also experiencing a fundamental shift in the rules of competition and the way the game of competition is played. The old, genteel, stable oligopolies that defined competition during the 20th century are rapidly restructuring. In their place are emerging markets fraught with uncertainty, diverse global players, rapid technological change, widespread price wars, and seemingly endless reorganization. That transition is occurring not only in the United States, but also in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In this issue, we demonstrate that (as predicted by those early researchers) a dramatic and far-reaching shift has occurred in the nature of competition in most industries. We present evidence that the shift has resulted in a new organizational paradigm that has been described as “hypercompetition”.