What’s your superpower? How companies can build an institutional capability to achieve competitive advantage

Build Your Company’s Superpower

Turn one distinctive capability into durable advantage.

The best companies don’t try to be great at everything—they become extraordinary at the one capability that consistently beats competitors. In their article “What’s Your Superpower?”, McKinsey partners Brian Quinn, Cristina Ferrer, and their colleagues describe this as an institutional capability: a system that blends people, processes, and technology to deliver superior results again and again. Done right, it becomes your organization’s “superpower” and a lasting edge.

How you build it (the VECTOR path)

Quinn, Ferrer, and team introduce the VECTOR model—a practical framework for scaling capabilities across an entire organization:

• Vision & leadership: Set a clear, company-wide ambition for the capability and commit from the top.

• Employees (talent system): Recruit, upskill, and incent the people who make the capability real.

• Culture & mindset: Normalize the behaviors that reinforce the capability every day.

• Technology: Equip teams with tools, data, and platforms that amplify performance.

• Organization: Align structure, ownership, and decision rights so the capability scales.

• Routines (processes): Lock in operating mechanisms that make the capability repeatable.

Why it matters

As Quinn and Ferrer emphasize, organizations that deliberately build and scale a single, defining capability see faster time-to-value and more consistent outperformance—because the capability sticks, spreads, and compounds. If you’re ready to move beyond pilots and one-off wins, the path forward is to identify the right superpower and embed it across your business.