Competitive Advantage in Strategic Management A business without strategy is a business without direction. A strategy without competitive advantage is a business without prerequisites for success. Managing strategically means making decisions and implementing strategies that allow an organization to develop and maintain a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is a concept that motivates strategists to replicate the strategies that make the most successful companies successful. From this we can learn that competitive advantage is a very important concept in strategic management. Next, I will look in more depth at ¡°what¡¯ is competitive advantage¡±. Competitive advantage is what sets the organization apart. When a company maintains profits that exceed the average for its industry, does something that other competitors do not do something better than other companies, or does something that others cannot, the company is said to possess a competitive advantage over its rivals . The goal of much business strategy is to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Getting it and keeping it is what strategic management means. It¡¯s hard to do, and getting harder.1 There are 2 main views of the alternative model of superior returns. Industrial organization (I/O) view and resource-based view. The industrial organization view focuses on the structural forces within an industry, the competitive environment of firms, and how these influence competitive advantage. The external environment determines profit potential. Companies within the same industry have similar resources and pursue similar strategies. Resources are mobile between firms (for this reason, seemingly unique differences between firms in the same industry will quickly fade away, competing firms will adopt or acquire similar resources. The resource-based view takes the approach that a company's resources company are more important than industry structure for gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage. Consider companies as very different sets of assets and capabilities. Internal resources and capabilities are the source of a company's profitability, not the external environment each company has unique resources and capabilities. Resources are not necessarily mobile across companies.2 Although the resource-based view focuses on analyzing internal organizational factors, it cannot ignore important external factors with its external environment. Competitive advantage will accrue to the firm that possesses unique resources or capabilities. A resource-based view emphasizes that a firm uses its resources and capabilities to create a competitive advantage that ultimately results in superior value creation. According to the resource-based view, to develop a competitive advantage the firm must have resources and