Transient Advantage

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According to Colombia BS Professor Rita Gunther McGrath, achieving a Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA) (establishing a unique competitive position that can be sustained for long periods of time) is nearly impossible these days. Allthough that idea is not new (see for example this discussion on 12manage: and compare and ), Professor McGrath does introduce an interesting new term: TRANSIENT ADVANTAGE (TA). I looked up the word "transient", it means: brief, temporary, passing, provisional, temporal. Quite the opposite of sustainable if you think about it. McGrath argues companies need to embrace the notion of TA instead of SCA, "learning to launch new strategic inititiatives again and again, and creating a portfolio of advantages that can be built quickly and abandonded just as rapidly". What I liked most of this article is the seven dangerous misconceptions, most of which indeed I have witnessed several times over the years: 1. The trap (The belief that being first to mar (...) Read more? Sign up for free

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		Purna Chandra, Business Consultant, India
	Transient Advantage Sounds like INNOVATION & CHANGE To sustain CA, an organization has to continually (...)

		In Ho Kim, Professor, Korea (South)
	New Sights on Profit-seeking Will CA, SCA, or even TA guarantee a superior perf (...)

		Jaap de Jonge, Editor, Netherlands
	Adaptive Goodness @: Thank your for your reaction, which looks inter (...)

		Andrew Blaine, Business Consultant, South Africa
	Arenas and Markets I am inclined to agree with the principle behind t (...)

		K.V.Narrasimham, Professor, India
	TA & Adaptive Goodness @: Please let us know what is Adaptive Goodness ( (...)

		In Ho Kim, Professor, Korea (South)
	Adaptive Goodness @, @: In order for us to understand and explain va (...)

		Vivek Joshi
	'TA' versus 'Simple Steps' Some time back early in the last decade I recall r (...)

		Indrajit Sethi, Professor, India
	SCA should be Left Behind in 20th Century TA spells a fresh approach! The top leading organ (...)

		taha2656
	Transit Advantage (TA) and SCA I feel TA and SCA are same as Objectives and Strat (...)

		Jagdish B Acharya, Consultant, India
	TA, SCA etc. Come Much Later @: I agree with you. When a firm understands custo (...)

		Andrew Blaine, Business Consultant, South Africa
	Recognition of Advantage @: I am not sure that I agree with your sequence o (...)

		In Ho Kim, Professor, Korea (South)
	AG as a Result of Needs-Focused Innovation @: Thanks for your understanding of Adaptive Goodn (...)

		Robinson M. Tenu, Entrepreneur, Cameroon
	Transient Advantages = Opportunities to Exploit Sometimes simple opportunities pop up during busin (...)

		In Ho Kim, Professor, Korea (South)
	What Makes a Transient Situation? When customers' needs change or evolve, a firm's s (...)

		Anneke Zwart, Student (University), Netherlands
	From Sustainable Competitive Advantage to Transient Advantage In the past decades, basically all businessess’ s (...)