competing against time.

George Stalk Jr & Thomas M. Holt.

Business usually think in terms of reducing costs. Competing against time argues we should think in terms of reducing time.

A small store than can refresh it's inventory every week will need less inventory than a big store that refreshes its inventory every month, yet have just as much variety. It may be price competitive with the bigger store since it will need far less inventory on hand.

A business that can incorporate customer feedback within weeks is far better off than a business that releases a new product line every year. Mistakes are costly when they can only be corrected once a year. Long term planning is a guessing game that's often wrong. Short product cycles reduce these risks

Ducker covered some of this in "Hustle as Strategy" It's good to dig deeper into the subject.

Of course its very difficult to change an organization to support short product cycles. Much of the book covers this topic. Short cycles require integrated cross disciple thinking and action, and veers away from silos of specialization that drive cost reduction.

Organizations that expedite things to make things faster or create skunk works projects are implicitly admitting their regular structure doesn't support fast product cycles