Karel Cool

Karel Cool is a professor of strategic management at INSEAD whose work addresses competitive positioning and industry dynamics. With Ingemar Dierickx, he wrote the 1989 Management Science paper “Asset Stock Accumulation and Sustainability of Competitive Advantage.”

Their argument centers on the difference between buying a resource and developing an asset stock through successive investments. They identify features of accumulation that can affect imitation, including the time required to build an asset, the contribution of assets already in place, and connections among assets. They also identify erosion: an established position can weaken if its underlying assets are not maintained. For an article about capability compounding, Cool’s contribution provides a strategic explanation for why a competitor’s new expenditure may not immediately match an established operating capability.