Chapter 7 Looking Inside for Competitive Advantage

1. Chapter 7Looking Inside for Competitive Advantage Jay B. Barney

2. Porter’s work on the “five forces model” • Rivalry among competing firms • Potential entry of new competitors • Potential development of substitute products • Bargaining power of suppliers • Bargaining power of customers

3. SWOT • Strengths • Weaknesses • Opportunities • Threats

4. Resource and Capabilities • Financial assets • Physical assets • Human assets • Organizational assets used by a firm to develop, manufacture and deliver products or services to its customers

5. The Question of Value • Do a firm’s resources and capabilities add value by enabling it to exploit opportunities and/or neutralize threats? • Although they may have added value in the past, changes in customer tastes, industry structure, or technology can render them less valuable in the future. • Such changes may increase the value of those resources. • By answering the question of value, managers link the analysis of internal resources and capabilities with the analysis of environmental opportunities and threats.

6. The Question of Rareness • If controlled by numerous competing firms, that resource is unlikely to be a source of competitive advantage for any one of them. • Valuable but common resources and capabilities are sources of competitive parity. • While resources and capabilities must be rare among competing firms in order to be a source of competitive advantage, this does not mean that common, but valuable, resources are not important; may be essential for a firm’s survival; may enable a firm to gain at least a temporary competitive advantage

7. The Question of Immitability • A firm that possesses valuable and rare resources and capabilities can gain a temporary competitive advantage • If competing firms face a cost disadvantage in immitating these resources, firms with these special abilities can obtain a sustained competitive advantage • Immitation can occur in at least two ways: • Duplication-imitating firm builds the same kinds of resources • Firms may be able to substitute some resources for other resources

8. The Question of Immitability • The importance of history in creating firm resources • The importance of numerous “small decisions” in developing, nurturing and exploiting resources • The importance of socially complex resources

9. History • As firms evolve, they pick up skills, abilities and resources that are unique to them • Whenever immitation depends upon unique historical circumstances, those immitating these resources will be at a cost disadvantage building them

10. The importance of numerous small decisions • More frequently, a firm’s competitive advantage seems to depend on numerous small decisions through which a firm’s resources and capabilities are developed and exploited • Small decisions are essentially invisible to firm’s resources and capabilities. Big Decisions are more obvious, easier to describe, and, perhaps, easier to immitate • Success does not depend on doing a few big things right, but on doing lots of little things right

11. Socially Complex Resources • Reverse Engineering firms seeking to imitate these resources need only purchase them, take them apart and duplicate the technology in question • Socially complex resources and capabilities--organizational phenomena like reputation, trust, friendship, teamwork and culture--while not patentable, are much more difficult to immitate

12. The Question of Organization • Is a firm organized to exploit the full competitive potential of its resources and capabilities? • Numerous components are relevant: • formal reporting structure • explicit management control systems • compensation policies • “Complimentary resources” limited ability to generate competitive advantage in isolation

13. The Competitive Implications of the “Cola Wars” • Coke’s and Pepsi’s share acquisition strategies may be valuable, they are not rare, nor does either have a cost advantage in implementing them • Both are beginning to recognize the futility of going head to head against an equally skilled competitor in a battle for market share

14. The Competitive Implications of the “Cola Wars”Exploiting different resources:

15. The Management Challenge • Sustained competitive advantage cannot be created simply by evaluating environmental opportunities and threats, and then conducting business only in high-opportunity, low-threat environments • It depends on the unique resources and capabilities that a firm brings to competition in its environment