Different strategies on how to create and keep a competitive advantage

1. DEVELOPING A
COMPETITIVE
STRATEGY
Prepared and Presented By: Aric Smoker

2. Competitive Advantage is Always
Relative
■ True competitive advantage is measured by whether or not you are better, faster, and
or cheaper compared to your competitors.

3. CompetingThrough Disruption
■ By changing the way that the industry is operated or bringing something new to an
industry you can create a strong competitive advantage.

4. Competitive Advantage is Never
Permanent
■ Companies constantly need to be working to obtain new competitive advantages
since there will always be competitors working to get a step ahead of you.

5. TheTwo Faces of Competitive
Advantage
■ Onstage competitive advantage is the image that customers have about how your
product competes with competitors and backstage competitive advantage compares
your resources, capabilities and relationships to your competitors.

6. Understanding Industry Dynamics
■ You must fully understand and stay on top of the industry dynamics in order to
understand what you must do to create an advantage, and remain competitive.

7. Managing Complementors
■ Complementors are your allies, and you must work closely with them to ensure that
your products coexist and work well with each other to increase customer value.

8. Deep CustomerAlignment
■ It is important to align your products so that they best meet the needs and the wants
of the consumer because without happy customers, then there is no future business.

9. Focus On the Entire Purchase-and-
Consumption Cycle
■ Rather than focusing simply on whether or not your product is better or cheaper than
competitors, think about all of the factors that go into a consumer making an
educated purchase.

10. SuperiorValue-ChainArchitecture
■ Be sure to design the value-chain so that you reduce unnecessary costs while still
continuing to have high quality, this will then increase margins and pass savings on to
the consumer.

11. RelationshipAdvantage
■ Having customers that are unwilling to switch to competitors because they are
familiar with how to use your products (sticky relationships), can help to create
lifelong customers and make customer acquisition very valuable.

12. CompetingThrough Innovation
■ Continually innovating and coming up with new products and ideas can provide a way
to rise above the competition, and maintain an advantage.

13. Scale and ScopeAdvantages
■ Know the scope and scale to which your business is operating, you can then begin to
build ways to create durable competitive advantage and or begin to expand the scope
in which you operate.

14. FindingYour Alpha
■ Alpha resources are those that make your company undeniably better than
competitors, such as the resources and capabilities of a company.

15. From Strategy to Action
■ Strategies that are never acted on are worthless.Always make a strong strategy and
then enact it to see the results.