Linking learning, customer value, and resource investment decisions: Developing dynamic capabilities

This paper suggests that firm strategic capabilities are developed through accumulated learning and associated investment processes and that it is these learning processes, and the resource investments that follow from decisions about them, rather than the activities or resources of the firm per se, that provide a basis of sustainable competitive advantage. Specifically, we suggest that gathering information about customer behavior, the managerial perceptions that come from learning about customer behavior, and the investment decisions that follow from those perceptions provide the basis for the development, or for the failure to develop, of firm capabilities. We further argue that such learning processes will differ with market environments, and that firm performance will reflect such learning processes actually develop in different market environments.