Competitive Advantage: Sustainable or Temporary in Today’s Dynamic Environment?

Spirited debate in the field of strategic management wages as to whether competitive advantage is sustainable or merely temporary in today's highly dynamic environments. The objectivity of the debate, however, suffers from a lack of specificity regarding the terms " sustainable " and " temporary. " That is, the amount of time or duration of a sustained or temporary competitive advantage is never specified by a writer. This presentation offers an approach for determining the period of time that distinguishes sustained competitive advantage from temporary competitive advantage. The approach entails determining whether a competitive advantage denoted by a competitive strategy yields above-average returns in one or more industry life cycle stages – introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Competitive strategies providing above-average returns in only one stage are classified as temporary advantages while competitive strategies providing such returns in more than one stage are classified as sustained competitive advantages. Generic and combination competitive strategies are examined.