In Clockspeed, Charles Fine draws on a decade's worth of research at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management to introduce a new vocabulary for understanding the forces of competition and making strategic decisions that will determine the destiny of your company, as well as your industry.

Taking inspiration from the world of biology, Fine argues that each industry has its own evolutionary life cycle (or "clockspeed"), measured by the rate at which it introduces new products, processes, and organizational structures.

Just as geneticists study the fruit fly to gain insight into the evolutionary paths of all animals, managers in any industry can learn from the industrial fruit flies - such as Internet services, personal computers, and multimedia entertainment - which evolve through new generations at breakneck speed.

Applying the lessons of the fruit flies to industries as diverse as bicycles, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors, Fine illustrates how competitive advantage is lost or gained by how well a company manages a dynamic web of relationships that run throughout its chain of suppliers, distributors, and alliance partners.