ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the possibility that the core competence paradigm (CCP) has something useful to offer to those concerned with the strategic management of R&D in large firms. Our starting assumption is that there is a prima facie similarity between the CCP and the emerging literature on the strategic management of R&D on one crucial issue. This issue is the conceptualization of the diversified firm not as a collection of discrete strategic business units (SBUs), but as a collection of SBUs which draw on certain common corporate resources.
