Sostenibilidad de la estrategia

GHEMAWAT, P (1986), Sustainable advantage, Harvard Business Review, 64, September-October, 53-58.
Amidst an environment of intensifying competition, where rivals are imitating and upgrading productand process inventions with relative ease, businesses need to establish sustainable advantages if they wish to maintain their competitive edge. Sustainable advantages fall into three categories: sizein the targeted market, superior access to resources or customers, and restrictions on competitors’ options. Since markets are finite, there are compelling advantages to being large. These exist inthe form of scale economies, experience effects, and economies of scope. Scale economies arise from spreading production/distribution costs over a national, regional or even local level at a particularpoint in time. Frequently, when a business is the first to make a longterm, largely unrecoverable investment in a region, it gains a local monopoly which renders competing regional businessesunviable. Likewise, experience is a kind of irreversible, market-specific investment over time. Product pioneers, for example, can sometimes have a first-mover advantage which often builds strong customerloyalty and allows for incremental technological improvements to keep ahead of rivals. Economies of scope arise when a firm is able to share resources across interrelated markets and products, whilekeeping the cost of those resources largely fixed. Long-term proprietary access to resources or customers is a sustainable advantage because competitors are discouraged by the penalty they would incur ifthey tried to imitate the leader. Superior access to information may reflect the benefits of scale or experience but, more often, hinges on hidden know-how. The ability to tie up inputs alsoconstitutes a sustainable advantage if the commodity’s supply is limited and the company has the right to use it on favourable terms. Companies can also secure preferred access through selfenforcing...