Strategy used to be about protecting your existing competitive advantage. Today, it’s about finding the next advantage. Strategy starts to decay the moment it’s created. That’s why corporations must develop policies that address tomorrow’s realities.

Strategic actions belong in one of three boxes: Box 1: Managing the present Box 2: Selectively abandoning the past Box 3: Creating the future.

Most organizations restrict their strategic thinking to the first box. Leaders are focused on cost reduction and margin improvement, especially during a downturn.

But strategy must include the second and third boxes as well. Leaders must address what their companies need to do to sustain leadership in the long term.

Industries transform as a result of customer discontinuities and nonlinear shifts in technology. Today, nanotechnology and genetic engineering are revolutionizing.

The semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries, while globalization is opening doors to emerging economies, particularly India and China.

As a result of these forces, companies find that their strategies require almost constant reinvention. The only way to stay ahead is to innovate. It’s executives’ responsibility to make money with the current strategy—that’s the challenge of Box 1. It’s also their responsibility to make up for the decay and commoditization of that strategythat’s the challenge of Boxes 2 and 3.

In some ways, to understand these three boxes is to understand Hinduism. Though the religion recognizes 330 million gods, there are only three main Hindu deities: Vishnu, the god of preservation; Shiva, the god of destruction; and Brahma, the god of creation. The correspondence between the three boxes and the three gods is clear. Box 1 preserving or managing the present: Vishnu Box 2 destroying or selectively abandoning the past: Shiva Box 3 creating the future: Brahma

According to Hindu philosophy, preservation-destruction-creation is a continuous cycle without a beginning or an end. The three gods play an equally important role in all three phases of that process. Furthermore, Hinduism states that, while changes in the universe can be quite dramatic, the processes leading to those changes often involve small steps. This is precisely the challenge for large companies: to create their future while managing their present. To take small steps that lead to big change.