8 ways on how to achieve competitive advantage in the strategic business environment

1. Uniqueness  - finding unique opportunities and solutions is about imagination, insight, foresight, and the courage to pursue it. Unique is new, different, but most important of all, untested and unproven. By the time a unique solution is validated as profitable, it is no longer unique for the next company. Also, if it is a unique business model or business capability, it is likely unapproachable, in the short-term, by competitors.


2. Strategic Focus - Strategic focus comes about from marrying distinctive competency and purpose to form a superior value proposition. Strategic focus is about developing a longer view of competitive advantage with a combination of purpose, competency, and value proposition.

This creates an internal environment that has the confidence and implicit support to continue to perfect and develop that focus through creating stronger competencies and further perfecting the value proposition.

3. Strategic Intent/Vision/BHAGs - Strategic intent challenges and guides the organization to achieve the achievable by having a clear focus on outlandish objectives which require the development of new capabilities to achieve.


4. Innovation -  Innovation is inventiveness put into profitable practice. In an evolving economy, the business organization must innovate at a rate that meets or exceeds its environment in order to sustain a competitive advantage.


5. Continual Innovation -  Making innovation as an ongoing process on all fronts.


6. Democratic Principles - Democratic principles are needed to fully engage the active participation of diverse thinkers from across the organization. Broad and diverse participation improves innovation.

7. Strategic Management as a self-improving learning process - Strategic management must become, amongst other things, a learning and self-improvement process for the organization.


8. Dynamic Capabilities - Sustainable competitive advantage is ultimately based on dynamic capabilities, the capability to produce and utilize new capabilities on a continuous basis.