BNET Business Dictionary

Business Definition for: Competitive Advantage

  • a factor giving an advantage to a nation, company, group, or individual in competitive terms. Used by Michael Porter for the title of his classic text on international corporate strategy, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990), the concept of competitive advantage derives from the ideas on comparative advantage of the 19th-century economist David Ricardo.

Wiktionary Definition for: Competitive Advantage

  • something that places a company or a person above the competition

Additional Resources

Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage is an important concept of strategic management. It defines the ‘uniqueness' of an organization vis-à-vis its competitors. Competitive strategy of the organization is the roadmap towards gaining competitive advantage. The strategy by which the sustainable competitive advantage is gained is known as business level strategy of the organization....
Tags: Competitive Advantage, Strategy, Management
Presentations 2003-01-01
The Origins Competitive Advantage: Innovation, Evolution And The Environment
Competitive advantage of an organization involves gaining an advantage over other competing firms with regard to the design and delivery of the product or service. Gaining competitive advantage entail a set of specialized skills, assets, and capabilities for the organization. Innovation is the ability to envision and apply creative solutions...
Tags: Innovation, Environment, Competitive Advantage, Strategy, Management
Presentations 2003-01-01
Competitive Advantage: Sustainable Or Temporary In Today's Dynamic Environment?
This paper offers an approach for determining the period of time that distinguishes sustained competitive advantage from temporary competitive advantage. The approach entails determining whether a competitive advantage denoted by a competitive strategy yields above-average returns in one or more industry life cycle stages - introduction, growth, maturity, and decline....
Tags: Environment, Competitive Advantage, Competitive Strategy, Strategy, Marketing Research, Management, Marketing
White papers 2001-09-17
On Becoming a Strategic Partner: The Role Of Human Resources In Gaining Competitive Advantage
Although managers cite human resources as a firm's most important asset, many organizational decisions do not reflect this belief. This paper uses the VRIO (value, rareness, imitability, and organization) framework to examine the role that the Human Resource HR function plays in developing a sustainable competitive advantage. It discusses why...
Tags: Human Resources, Competitive Advantage, Strategy, Management
White papers 2003-01-01
Sustaining Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage is an important concept of strategic management. It defines the ‘uniqueness' of an organization vis-à-vis its competitors. When the organization achieves a higher rate of return than its competitors, it is said to have gained the competitive advantage. For gaining sustainable competitive advantage, a firm has to optimally...
Tags: Competitive Advantage, Strategy, Management
Presentations 2003-01-01
Creating A Competitive Advantage Using Competitive Intelligence
Competitive advantage is the measure of a firm's competencies and performance against the factors prevailing in the firm's external environment. Intense competition between rival firms marks the external environment of an organization. The different firms engage in moves and counter moves to seek competitive advantage. Competitive intelligence is collecting appropriate...
Tags: Competitive Advantage, Competitive Intelligence, Charlotte, University Of North Carolina, Strategy, Tools & Techniques, Management
Presentations 2003-01-01
Finding Competitive Advantage in Self-Managed Work Teams
To build a competitive advantage, a firm must provide buyers with superior value. While companies can secure competitive advantages through investment in capital or technology, such avenues provide only short-term benefits as competitors imitate the successful. However, firms can sustain human resource-based competitive advantages that others cannot readily imitate because...
Tags: Team, Competitive Advantage, Strategy, Management
White papers
On The Edge: Vanishing Point - The Search For Sustainable Competitive Advantage
It's one of those immutable laws of business: Once you have competitors, your customers have a choice. And once your customers have a choice, you have to answer the question, "Why should we buy from you?" The answer to this question is your competitive advantage, whether it's a matter of...
Tags: Accenture Ltd., Competitive Advantage, Strategy, Management
White papers 2003-04-25
Strategies For Competitive Advantage In Electronic Commerce
From the executive summary: ‘Sustaining the competitive advantage in the competitive business era is one of the most important activities for an e-business organization. As e-businesses shift their focus from building a customer base to increasing revenue growth and profitability, they should re-evaluate their current business strategies, if any, and...
Tags: California State University, Competitive Advantage, Long Beach, E-business, Electronic Commerce, Web Technology, E-business/E-Commerce, Strategy, Internet, Management
White papers 2003-01-01
Competitive Advantage And Generic Strategies
Competitive advantage keeps a firm above the rest of the competing firms. It is acquired by delivering a higher ‘value' to the customers as compared to the rival firms. Generic strategies are certain approaches adopted by organizations towards gaining a sustainable competitive advantage. The same is in line with the...
Tags: Utah State University, Competitive Advantage, Generic Strategy, Strategy, Management
Presentations 2003-01-01
Leverage SLAs For A Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage is the measure of how much more ‘value' the organization is delivering to the customers as compared to the rival firms in the market. In an increasingly customer-centric business world of today, Service Level Agreements SLAs have become important drivers in gaining sustainable competitive advantage in the IT...
Tags: SLA, Competitive Advantage, Jupitermedia Corp., Service Level Management, Strategy, It Operations, It service Management, Management
White papers 2002-05-20
Strategic Positioning For Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage of a firm is measured by how much more value the firm is able to provide to its customers as compared to its rival firms. The prime aim of an organization is to clearly differentiate its offering from that of its competitor towards gaining sustainable competitive advantage. The...
Tags: University Of Florida, Competitive Advantage, Positioning, Strategy, Management
Presentations 2003-01-01
Strategic Objectives In Worldwide Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage of a firm is measured by how much more ‘value' the firm is able to provide to its customers as compared to its rival firms. The prime aim of an organization is to clearly differentiate its offering from that of its competitor towards gaining sustainable competitive advantage. Global...
Tags: Utah State University, Competitive Advantage, Strategy, Management
Presentations 2003-01-01
The Resource-Based Tangle: Towards A Sustainable Explanation Of Competitive Advantage
The arguably dominant contemporary approach to the analysis of sustained competitive advantage is the resource-based view. The paper argues that much resource-based research rests on partial, implicit and problematic assumptions, and that this has led to conclusions that are much less general than the proponents of the view believe. In...
Tags: Competitive Advantage, Copenhagen Business School, Strategy, Management
White papers 2000-02-21
What In The World Is Competitive Advantage?
In recent years the concept of competitive advantage has taken center stage in discussions of business strategy. Statements about competitive advantage abound, but a precise definition is elusive. In reviewing the use of the term competitive advantage in the strategy literature, the common theme is value creation. However, there is...
Tags: Competitive Advantage, University Of California, Strategy, Management
White papers 2003-08-05
Strategic Competitive Advantage in the Global Automotive Industry
This study identifies top three drivers of competitive advantage for passenger car manufacturers. It identifies branding, scale, and production efficiency and flexibility as the key strategic drivers of competitive advantage in the global automotive industry. It also depicts that it is essential for an automaker to know which operational levers...
Tags: Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Competitive Advantage, Management, Strategy
White papers
Resource-Based View of Knowledge Management for Competitive Advantage
One is not only in a new millennium, but also in a new era: the knowledge era. Sustainable competitive advantage is dependent on building and exploiting core competencies. The resource-based view RBV of the firm defines a strategic asset as one that is rare, valuable, imperfectly imitable and non-substitutable. Knowledge...
Tags: Knowledge, Competitive Advantage, University Of Georgia, Strategy, Knowledge Management, Management, Enterprise Software, Software
White papers 2005-10-23
High Price CAN be a Competitive Advantage!
High Price CAN be a Competitive Advantage!Need PointersThis scenario is much like what a colleague of mine encounters all the time. I keep telling him to not worry about the literal value (2 hours of time is $200 so that is the upcharge for the extra tangibles) but rather what...
Tags: competitive advantage, High-Price, sales person
Discussion threads 2008-07-08
Sustainable Competitive Advantage with Core Competence : A Review
AbstractThe potential of an organization's sustainable competitive advantage depends on the rareness and imitability of its resources and capabilities. The less imitable a competitive advantage is, the more cost disadvantage is faced by the competitor in imitating these competencies. Thus, core competence is an important source of sustained competitive advantage...
Tags: competence, competency, Hamel, Harvard Business Review, knowledge, Strategy, technology
Research articles 2002-12-01
Competitive Advantage: How Do You Develop A Competitive Edge?
Strategic moves and counter moves of competitors mark the external environment of an organization. In order to survive and stay afloat, the organization needs to have a competitive edge over its competitors. It can do so by delivering enhanced product value to its customers as compared to its competitors. When...
Tags: Santa Clara University, Competitor, Competitive Advantage, Strategy, Management
Presentations 2003-01-01
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