A provocative—possibly apocryphal—story has the late C.K. Prahalad, the guru of “core competence,” doing a strategy audit for a huge Indian conglomerate. The company, Prahalad tells the CEO, is simply too complex and diverse. It needs to shed a few divisions and find and focus on an integrative core competence. “Actually,” the CEO responded, “we do have a core competence that unites us: we’re very, very good at winning government contracts.”