Beyond Competitive Advantage

Introduction

The basic principles of business-level strategy as taught in business schools and practiced in companies are simple: discover, target, and then craft attractive market positions that deliver sustained advantage in competitive markets. Firms achieve these positions as they configure and arrange resources and activities in ways that yield either unique value to customers or common value at uniquely low cost. This concept of strategy as position remains a central concept to business school curricula across the globe. Valuable positions, protected from imitation or appropriation by others, provide sustained profit streams.

The problem with this view of strategy is that investors reward companies only once for discovering, occupying, ...