Have you thought about the resources and capabilities that you have on hand, and how well you are using them?

Have you thought about how these aspects of your organisation, whether not-for-profit or a business, can help you stay in the game and be successful?

Well, when planning your strategies perhaps reflect on your own unique set of resources and capabilities using the following four attributes:

1. value
2. rarity
3. imitability
4. organization

Value. What is the value that you have? For you must have resources and capabilities of value in order to create a proposition that customers will pay for.  This value that you have must be capable of exploiting an opportunity or seeing off a potential threat. Or, on the other hand, is this resource or capability hindering your ability to respond to opportunities or threats? That is, is it a weakness?

Rarity. Do you have at your disposal an asset that is rare? That not many others have? Perhaps you own a particular segment of the market. Perhaps some of the talents that your staff have are quite unique. What about a technology that you use in your processes that not many others have.

Imitability. How easy is it for others to copy what you have? Think about the processes you have, the way your goods are produces, or the particular value that you add to your services. Can what you do be easily imitated by current or potential competitors?

Organisation. Are you geared to taking full advantage of the resources and capabilities that you have? Think about your policies and procedures. Do they stifle or do they give assistance to exploiting the value, the rarity and the imitability of what you have at hand?

For sustaining competitive advantage is about ensuring all four of these attributes are kept in strategic focus.

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