Contents
Core competence is not a term just for corporations. Communities and institutions also have capabilities they can build on. The Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola, is an early and well-documented example of Core Competence. Its history shows how a community discovers its strength, focuses it and then puts it to use in many places.
An order without a school plan
Situation
On September 27, 1540, Pope Paul III approves the new community. Its founders had studied at the University of Paris. The order wants to preach, give the Spiritual Exercises, work in the missions and help the needy. Schools for young lay people are not at the center. At first, the Jesuits teach theology at universities and run houses for their own members studying at European universities.
Link to the principle
The capability is already there before anyone recognizes it as a core. The first Jesuits bring with them a thorough academic education and rigorous spiritual training. This combination is rare. It becomes a competence when the order notices how much demand there is for it outside its own ranks.
Gandía and Messina
Situation
In 1546, the head of a Jesuit college in Gandía, Spain, holds public philosophical disputations. Families in the town are impressed and ask for lessons for their sons. The teachers agree. Two years later, in October 1548, at the request of the citizens of Messina in Sicily, Jesuits open a school for the town’s young people. It is the order’s first school intended from the outset for lay students. Ignatius sends 10 especially gifted Jesuits from Rome to staff it, among them Peter Canisius.
Link to the principle
Here the first of C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel’s tests comes into view: does the capability open up new fields? What was meant as training for the order’s own people can be transferred to an entirely different group. The demand comes from outside; the capability comes from within.
From a single case to a network
Situation
Messina becomes the model. Other towns also want a Jesuit school. By the time Ignatius dies in 1556, the order is already running dozens of colleges on three continents. A century after its founding, there are more than 400 schools; in 1739, more than 650. Many schools charge no tuition, supported by towns and benefactors.
Link to the principle
Here the second and third tests are met. The benefit is noticeable for families and towns. And the capability is hard to imitate because it does not lie in buildings but in teachers who have all gone through a similar, long training. Each individual school is an end product. The competence behind it is the same.
The Ratio Studiorum
Situation
The more schools there are, the more urgent a common plan becomes. In 1581, a committee meets without a clear result. In 1586, a smaller committee presents a draft, and starting in 1591, a version is tested for three years. In 1599, the final Ratio Studiorum appears. It sets out the duties of those in charge, the curriculum from grammar, humanities and rhetoric to philosophy and theology, and the method of teaching.
Link to the principle
With the Ratio, the competence is written down and becomes transferable. A new college in a distant city does not have to reinvent the wheel. At the same time, the core stays alive because the plan was tested and revised before it took effect. Core competence needs both: know-how in people and a form in which it is passed on.
What the competence carried and what it cost
Situation
Education becomes the order’s hallmark and its most important work. The Jesuits are regarded as the first order to run schools and universities as a principal task in their own right. Their influence on the elites of Europe grows. It also earns them enemies. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV suppresses the order. In 1814, it is restored. In 1832, the Ratio is revised and gives more room to the vernacular, history, mathematics and the natural sciences.
Link to the principle
The competence survives crises because it lives in a way of working and in people. But it had to be adapted when the world changed. A core competence is not a monument but something that is cared for and renewed.
Key takeaways
Key lessons
- Look at what others ask you for help with; that is often where your competence lies.
- A capability becomes a core when it carries many fields.
- Write down how you work so that others can pass it on.
- Test your plan before you make it binding.
- Renew your competence when the world around it changes.
Summary
The Jesuits were not intended as a teaching order. With Gandía and above all Messina in 1548, they discovered that their thorough education was in demand outside the order. From this competence grew a network of hundreds of schools, set down in the Ratio Studiorum of 1599. The example shows core competence outside business: a capability that lives in people, carries many works and is hard to imitate.
Sources
- John W. O’Malley: The First Jesuits. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1993.
- John W. O’Malley: How the First Jesuits Became Involved in Education. In: Vincent J. Duminuco (ed.): The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum. 400th Anniversary Perspectives. New York: Fordham University Press 2000.
