| Four Routes to Strategic Advantage | |
| Basically, there are four ways to strengthen a company's position relative to that of your competitors. | |
| 1. | You can re-adjust the allocation of the resources at management's disposal, with the object of strengthening certain of the company's capabilities in such a way as to increase its market share and profitability. Even when the company has in effect no more management resources than its competitors, it can often achieve resounding competitive success if it is effective in bringing those resources to bear on one crucial point. |
| 2. | In the case where your company enjoys no initial advantage over competitors and the key factors for success struggle is being waged with equal vigor by all concerned a relative advantage can still be achieved by exploiting any difference in competitive conditions between you and your rivals. Here your task is either to; (a) Make use of the technology, sales network profitability, and so on, of those of your services that are not competing directly with the target competitors, or (b) Make use of any other differences in the composition of assets between the enterprise and its competitors. |
| 3. | If your principal competitor is well established, that competitor may be hard to dislodge. Sometimes the only answer is in unconventional strategy aimed at upsetting the key factors for success on which the competitor has built an advantage. To arrive at such a strategy, the starting point is to challenge the accepted assumptions governing the way of doing business in the industry or markets in question with a view to seeing whether it may be possible to change the rules of the game, upset the status quo, and thereby gain a novel and powerful competitive advantage. |
| 4. | Even in cases of intense competition, success in the competitive struggle can be achieved by the development of innovations. These innovations may involve the opening up of new markets or the development of new services. Both lines of action involve exploitation of the market by vigorous measures in particular areas untouched by competitors. |
| In each of these four methods, the principal concern is to avoid doing the same thing, on the same battleground, as the competition. The aim of these four methods for strategic planning, therefore, is to attain a competitive situation in which you can (1) gain a relative advantage through measures competitors will find hard to follow, and (2) extend that advantage still further. | |
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325 Box Elder Drive
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West Chester, Pennsylvania
19380
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Telephone: 610-431-4833
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