Dynamic capabilities: implications for marketing strategy formulation and implementation

Theories concerning the source of superior firm performance are evolving. Marketing orientation theory and its counterpart, the resource-based view, are becoming outdated by the dynamic capabilities perspective as the importance of industrial change becomes evermore significant. Dynamic capabilities are the processes managers use to modify their organisations in order to 'keep in touch' with changes occurring in their industrial setting. This paper introduces the dynamic capabilities perspective by first tracing the debate on the source of superior firm performance. The contribution is made by informing strategic marketing academics and practitioners about the potential implications the era of dynamic capabilities has on marketing strategy formulation and implementation, otherwise known in practice as the SOSTAC process. This paper advocates strategic marketing practice should be an incessant, habitual, entrepreneurial opportunity sensing managerial skill which is incremental in nature allowing firms to adapt to or even drive industrial change through tactical flexibility, trial and reflective learning with the relentless monitoring of actions taken.