Sustainable Competitive Advantage | Debates in Strategic Management

DEBATES IN STRATEGIC
MANAGEMENT

Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................... 2
Critical evaluation....................................................................................................... 2
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 6
References................................................................................................................ 8

Introduction
The essay brings out a discussion on creation of sustainable competitive advantage. With the
increasing competition, organisations have often started employing adaption and innovative
technology to create competitive advantage. Technology has enabled organisation to conduct
online and international to acquire customers in foreign market. Online retailing has made the
competition at complex level where online presence cannot make stand out from crowd.
Sustainable competitive edge is key to organisational success because it is the major driver of
sustainable business value. Without sustainable competitive advantage, one risks another
business by enabling the business to have more sales, better profit margins, greater focus, and
higher customer with staff retention. Therefore, smaller business can develop sustainable
competitive advantage, which is based on superior value to specific niche market (Jones,
Harrison, and Felps, 2018). The essay brings out a discussion on importance of maintaining
sustainability with appropriate examining issues in strategic management. With the analysis
of competitive strategies, companies often use porter`s fiver forces model to study several
aspects of strategy made with examples of industry and changed it as per the dynamic
changes in the environment.
Critical evaluation
Critically evaluate the importance of innovation and adaptation of new technologies to
create sustainable competitive advantage for companies
While understanding and developing sustainable competitive advantage, it is important to
understand market segments. Looking at niche, which are not well served by the competitors
as it can be profitable and sold to. Developing the understanding of customers, which really
want and then establish value proposition, which grab attention. Three types of sustainable
competitive advantage covers cost advantage, value advantage, and focus advantage. At cost

advantage, the organisation can compete at price level. The organisation avail differentiated
offering, which are perceived at superior value. The organisation rely on specific market
niche with making and offering as designed for segment of market (Bashir, and Verma,
2017). Furthermore, it is profitable if it designs business model to deliver value proposition
by understanding strengths, competencies and use innovative methods to add value to
selected market. Key things which is needed to accomplish to support and then deliver value
proposition. For instance- level of services, branding, pricing, and quality. Main five steps
used to develop sustainable competitive advantage reflects that first mover advantage is the
first entrant in new market to obtain advantage over the other competitors. First mover
advantage is not sustainable (Amiri, Shirkavand, and Rezaeei, 2017). Best example for
sustainable competitive advantage includes Facebook and Google but not they dominate the
market. IT infrastructure plays an important role in accomplishing competitive advantage for
the organisation but at the same time, one has to maintain cloud computing and managing
private security issues because lack of security often lead to lack of sustainable competitive
advantage. It needs high level of trained staff who maintains the private security and cloud
computing (Ogunkoya, 2018). For example- Google maintains its customers and users
account by protecting their personal data, which shows first mover advantage, is far more
from maintaining sustainable system, which can last long in maintaining competitive
advantage. Encryption brings high level of security to its services because created data move
between devices, Google services, and data centres as it is protected by secure technology
like Transport layer security and HTTPs (Ogunkoya, 2018).
Google has remained an extremely invasion of privacy as Google uses potential technique
well known as fingerprint to find the particular device well known as Google Analytics
(Amiri, Shirkavand, and Rezaeei, 2017). This is a competitive advantage, as Google can trust
by keeping chrome secure, and maintained. On the other hand, many companies are not able