By Richard Hawkes | March 31, 2022
CEO World Magazine
Sometimes people talk about their business’s competitive advantage like it is a thing or collection of things—see that shiny thing, it is the source of our competitive advantage.
You will hear comments like “our competitive advantage is customer loyalty” or “economies of scale” or “technology” or all three and therefore we should make certain investments or changes. But how do you know that they are right? How do you know that the thing being pointed to is an actual source of competitive advantage?
Competitive advantage to a marketer may be a winning value promise, to a financial investor it may be a strength that can’t be copied by competitors, to an operations leader it may be product quality, and so on. People in companies are naturally prone to advocate for strategies and priorities that elevate the roles that they play individually. These creative tensions can easily muddle strategy conversations. read more…