•Briefly describe the theory of ‘Sustainable competitive advantage’
•Briefly describe the environment in which this theory would be effective.
•Students need to research and identify 2 to 3 industries and 2 to 3 companies who have been successful in creating a competitive advantage over their competition for longer period may be 5 to 10 years or more but finding difficult to maintain that. For example you can choose company or industry like Apple industry, car industry.
•Also identify some companies who have been successful in following bit of flexibility in their approach
•You need to discuss both sides of the arguments whether there is such thing as sustainable competitive advantage or companies need to be flexible in their business strategies due to changing business environment.
•There will always be some companies who have been changing part of their business model and still keeping something which has been helping them.
•You can see the Article on line on “Competitive Advantage or flexibility” by Rita Gunther McGrath and also see how the shortening of the strategy life cycle and product life cycle are contributing towards this change.
•Following concepts can be useful to analyse this research:
-Porters 3 generic strategies
-“AAA” framework to show where these changes are being adopted to become more flexible and/or sustainable competitive advantage
•References Harvard style
