Getting a grip on Control Points: Rethinking strategic management in an era of intensifying geopolitical and -economic competition

Abstract

A nation’s competitiveness strongly depends on its industry and firms to innovate and improve. Nevertheless, the geopolitical dimension of competitive advantage has been far less visible in strategic management and innovation studies literature. In the last few years, however, intensifying geopolitical and geo-economic competition have triggered debates among national governments how they can preserve their ability to act strategically and autonomously (i.e. strategic autonomy) and produce and use technological knowledge (i.e. technological sovereignty). Against this background, we aim to further the debate by introducing the concept of ‘control points’ - or unique and valuable firm activities for a state’s capacity to act, upon which others in the geopolitical context are dependent. Control points, we argue, thus mix firm-level strategic management concerns with state-level policy concerns. As such, control points not only include classical competitiveness characteristics such as a unique or leading position and a certain degree of dependency. Rather, they also concern an element of positioning from a geopolitical and geo-economic point of view to sustain competitiveness in times of open strategic autonomy and technological sovereignty. In this theoretical paper, we conceptualize the concept and its implications further, and provide future research avenues in line with our conceptual approach.

This seminar is organized by ABRI and the KIN Center for Digital Innovation.