The Arc of the Enterprise

A high-quality strategic resource yielding a powerful competitive advantage makes for great strategic simplicity.

Companies buy pickup trucks, office equipment, vertical milling machines, and chemical processing equipment, and they hire the services of warehouses, masses of high school and college graduates, lawyers, and accountants.  None of these inputs are normally strategic resources.  These kinds of assets and services cannot, in general, confer a competitive advantage, because competitors have access to virtually identical assets and services on the same terms.

A strategic resources is a kind of property that is fairly long lasting that has been constructed, developed over time, designed, or discovered by a company and that competitors cannot duplicate without suffering a net economic loss.  A high-quality strategic resource yielding a powerful competitive advantage makes for great strategic simplicity. 

ACTION POINT:  Identify and build on resources that would be hard for competitors to duplicate.