C H A P T E R S I X
The Past and Future
of Competitive Advantage
CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN
Competitive advantage is a concept that often inspires in strategists
a form of idol worship—a desire to imitate the strategies
that make the most successful companies successful. It is interesting,
however, that strategists have viewed precisely opposite factors
to be sources of competitive advantage at different points in the histories
of a number of industries. For example, Henry Ford’s emphasis
on focus has been touted right next to General Motors’
product-line breadth as the key to success. Today, the outsourcing
flexibility inherent in the nonintegrated business models of Cisco
Systems and Dell Computer is held up as a model for all to emulate,
whereas a generation ago IBM’s vertical integration was widely
considered an unassailable source of competitive advantage. In the
1980s, power-tool maker Black & Decker aggressively consolidated
its diffused international-manufacturing infrastructure into a few
global-scale facilities so that it could counter the aggressive marketshare
gains that Makita had logged by serving the world market
from a single plant in Japan. At that very time, Makita was moving
aggressively toward manufacturing in smaller-scale local facilities
around the world.
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Indeed, strategists whose anecdotal understanding of competitive
advantage runs only as deep as “If it’s good for Cisco, it
must be good for everybody” at best are likely to succeed in building
yesterday’s competitive advantages. If history is any guide, the
practices and business models that constitute advantages for to ...