战略最大的盲点：竞争优势的侵蚀（英）

spot: Erosion ofcompetitive advantage Misperceptions about the reach and durability of competitive advantage arehurting many companies’ profits. Five rules can help organizations maximizetheir edge over peers. byAndy West,Laura LaBerge, andMatt Banholzer Do you knowwhat your competitive advantage is? Are you sure? Competitive advantage is the most critical yet misunderstood facet of strategy. It’s more than acompany’s strengths—it’s the reason customers choose its offerings over its peers’ or why it isable to deliver higher returns than its peers through capital efficiency, price premiums, or lowercosts. Competitive advantage comprises unique operating models and hard-to-replicate assetssuch as intellectual property and customer access that enable a company to build superior valueover time. That foundation is shaky for many businesses today, our analysis shows. To identify shifts incompetitive advantage, we looked for changes in market position using a metric we call the “shuffle rate”—an industry-level marker that measures the speed of change in the positions ofmarket leaders and laggards.1We found that the shuffle rate has accelerated for more than 60percent of industries in the past decade, with an 11 percent increase in median rates (Exhibit 1).This pattern suggests that the defining elements of competitive advantage are in flux, thedegree of differentiation between market players is narrowing (causing more frequent positionalchanges), or both. The result is an increasing erosion of competitive advantage for some companies and a criticalopportunity to capture greater market share for others. Businesses in a sector with adecelerating shuffle rate may find themselves stuck in lagging positions as the industry’s topperformers deepen competitive moats around their leadership. Conversely, those in an industrywith an accelerating shuffle rate could find opportunities to attract customers previously lockedin by their competitors. Yet despite the importance of acting on these shifts,recent research2shows that mostcompanies aren’t monitoring how their industry positions and competitive advantages may bechanging (Exhibit 2). Despite this, most respondents report being confident that theyunderstand what drives customer and investor choice—a confidence that may be misplaced aschange accelerates. The result is a troubling reality: While the majority of respondents recognizethat their advantage is not durable, their organizations are not monitoring signals that wouldalert them to changes in the competitive landscape. The dynamics eroding incumbents’ competitive advantages in some industries illustrate why theshuffle rate is accelerating. For example, in entertainment, streaming services have matured, in-theater viewing has suffered a potentially permanent decline,3and creator-driven content onvideo-streaming platforms is competing with traditional media companies. This realignment hasbeen accompanied by significant M&A activity, including Netflix’s intended $83 billionacquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount’s merger with Skydance. The footwearindustry has likewise seen substantial change. Challenger brands have rapidly gained marketshare from incumbents, and distribution has shifted from wholesale-dominated to direct-to-consumer models, requiring significant supply chain restructuring and changing the competitiveadvantage needed to win. Exhibit1 While understanding the stability of the organization’s competitive advantage is critical, so is having ashared view of what that advantage is. When business leaders have different assumptions about theirorganization’s advantage, aligning on what to invest in and in which markets is challenging. And sincecompetitive advantage is context specific, it can be hard to recognize and assess. An additionalcomplication is that an organization’s competitive advantage is dependent on the capabilities of itscompetitors, and those players constantly change—both in who they are and how they choose to compete. Exhibit2 Not surprisingly, organizations that track their competitive advantage in each of their marketsand use it to guide their growth strategies and investment choices outperform their peers. In oursurvey,4respondents from companies in the top quintile of annual growth and EBIT in theirsectors were more than 2.5 times as likely as others to say that their organizations are fullyaligned on what their competitive advantages are and are two-thirds more likely to be trackingthat advantage at the market level. Five rules of maximizing your competitive advantage With competitive advantage under pressure, business leaders need to actively protect theiredge over peers. They can do so by following five rules: —Develop a granular view of competitive advantage.—Tailor the advantage to each market.—Don’t overinvest in areas that won’t improve competitive position.—Boost the return on competitive advantage by embedding it into strategic decision-making.—Track metrics