About the editors Gary Hamel is Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School. He came to LBS from the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan, where he taught International Management. Gary has worked extensively at board level in many of the world's most successful multinationals. His current research interests centre on the challenge of competing in global industries, on the problems of managing international strategic alliances and the value-added of top management. He is a member of the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal and has written various articles, some of which won McKinsey awards. His path-breaking concepts have been put to work in hundreds of companies including Kodak, AT&T, EDS and Dow Chemical. Aime Heene has a PhD in educational sciences and and MBA from De Vlerick School voor Management (University of Ghent, Belgium). After a ten-year career in consulting he joined De Vlerick School voor Management in 1989. He is head of the department of strategic management, a partner at De Vlerick School voor Management, and associate professor at the University of Ghent (Belgium). He chaired the International Workshop "Competence-Based Competition". His main domains of interest are: competitive strategy, human resource management, organization and the application of systems dynamics in the field of strategy implementation. He has published a number of articles on competitive strategy and the relationships between human resource management and competitive strategy.