Sustainable competitive advantage

C. Laszlo, D. Sherman and J. Whalen, Expanding the Value Horizon Stakeholders as a Source of Competitive Advantage, Sustainable Value Partners, Vienna, VA, 2004. Available at www.sustainablevaluepartners.com/svp stakeholder value.pdf. 

Technology leaders must pioneer discontinuous/radical changes along with continuous/incremental innovations. Radical innovation estabUshes and periodically renews the competitive advantage incremental innovations sustain it. Pressures on the leaders are to focus on only the near-term incremental efforts. Technology leaders must, however, build the will within the business leadership to recognize that both are necessary (35). 

Porter, M. E., Competitive Advantage Creating Sustaining Superior Performance, Free Press/Macmillan, 1980. 

Barney, J. 1991. Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17 99-120. 

Dierickx, I. Cool, K. 1989. Asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage. Management Science, 35 1504-1511. 

Hutchins, R. K. and L. G. Greenhalg (1995). Organic confusion sustaining competitive advantage. Nutrition Food Science 6 11-14. 

When success is achieved, it has to be maintained in a commercial environment. Hence even very successful products can become easily and rapidly superseded. Even when success has been sustained over a long period of time adaptation and improvement has been necessary in order to maintain competitive advantage. For instance, the glucose isomerase and penicilhn acylases used now are very much improved over those originally commercialised 20 years ago. This is partially due to technical advances and partially due to continuously increasing consumer and customer demands and standards. 

SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THE MAKING OF A GOOD OPPORTUNITY... 

Sustainable Competitive Advantage The Making of a Good Opportunity 177... 

In assessing technology opportunities, it is important to understand what the opportunity is, whether it represents a sustainable competitive advantage, the market for the opportunity, a preliminary financial analysis, and a discussion of personnel who are key to exploiting the opportunity. 

The sustainable competitive advantage the company has over other approaches... 

A technology with competitive advantage that is not sustainable... 

Read the Wall Street Journal for one week, collecting one article each day that discusses technical opportunities that various companies are considering or exploiting. Try to choose articles from the same or a related industry. In each of the articles identify key points of competitive advantage for the particular opportunity and in a short essay discuss whether those advantages are likely to be sustainable using Porter s five forces analysis. 

The chemical industry has to revitalize the drivers of innovation to proactively generate sustainable competitive advantage. Innovative breakthroughs can happen in a variety of dimensions, including not only new compounds, applications, and processes, but also new services and business models. 

Chemical industry players have only recently started transforming their supply chains, and enormous potential still remains to be captured. Being an early adopter, moving first, and taking a creative approach can really ensure distinctiveness, competitive advantage, and long-term, sustainable value creation. 

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