Competitive Success: Resources and Capabilities for Long-term Advantage

Running head: COMPETITIVE SUCCESS
COMPETITIVE SUCCESS
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1COMPETITIVE SUCCESS
Introduction
Competitive advantage can be described as a set of assets, abilities or company assets in
order to ensure that the company becomes more successful than its competitors over the long
period of time. With the extensive competition prevailing in the business environment, the
competitive advantages are required for a business to gain success amongst the different
competitors. In order to invest in an organization, the investors often look out for valuable
performance (Hill, Jones and Schilling 2014). Hence, in order to be successful in the long run, it
is very crucial for the business to have access to at least one competitive advantage which will
then assist the firm to become successful. Hence, the following section, five resources and
competitive capabilities which a company needs to possess to become successful competitively.
The latter half of the essay will be discussing the means to achieve sustainable competitive
advantage for a firm.
People
The people aspect of the business can be described as the primary competitive advantage
of any business. In case the people involved in the company are innovative creative and
hardworking then they tend to work well towards organizational goal which shall then contribute
towards creation of a competitive advantage. Although the different competitors who were
present in the firm may be able to copy any product idea or a service idea being offered by the
organization but it may not be possible for them to imitate the people present in the organization
(Calabrese et al. 2013). Hence, capturing the firm’s competitive knowledge in its human
resource is offered considered to be a useful technique.

2COMPETITIVE SUCCESS
According to Ivanov and Mayorova (2015), although having good people in the
organization is crucial, it is even more beneficial for the people in the organization to have a
better management. Leadership plays a great role in determine the direction in which the
different people function and for this reason. The management can lead the way for the target
market. For this reason, it is often believed that a good management and a strong workforce
would be beneficial to the organization.
For example, the national bank of Kuwait has established a strong employee base for
itself which tends to assist the firm in dealing with the customers and provide them uninterrupted
services.
Strategic Assets
Assets can be described as a useful aspect of an organization and any company which
wants to be successful in the long run is required to have an access to certain important assets.
These assets comprise of the capability to increase the performance of the organization and
improve its earning capability. For this reason, various organizations often tend to invest in
strategic assets that come in useful to them in the long run of the company. These strategic assets
often comprise of trademarks, copy rights, names of the domain, long term business contracts,
strategic plants, patents and other assets (Ghosh 2013). Moreover, for the companies who are
involved in the medical team, the companies with good development and research assets will be
successful in the given domain.
For instance, in Kuwait, the Kuwait Food company has various strategic assets at their
disposal. These strategic assets which are present in the organization help it to provide better
offerings to the organization which then assist it to achieve success in the long run.