Transient Advantage
Rita McGrath challenges the assumption that competitive advantage is always durable and argues for organisations that can repeatedly create, exploit and move on from advantages as conditions change.
Source
Transient Advantage
Published by Harvard Business Review · Rita Gunther McGrath · 1 June 2013
View original source →Why this matters
McGrath's argument is important because it shifts strategic attention from defending one advantage indefinitely to building the ability to create and renew advantages as markets move.
Triggerfish perspective
We would state this more cautiously: not every advantage is transient, and assets, IP, scale, networks and regulation can remain durable. But where advantage decays faster, the organisation's rate of learning and renewal becomes increasingly important. That is central to Continuous Growth.
Key takeaways
- Some competitive advantages have shorter useful lives than traditional strategy assumes.
- Portfolio thinking and timely reallocation become more important in turbulent markets.
- The ability to renew advantage can itself become a strategic capability.
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