resources are the assets, capabilities, processes, information, and knowledge that the organization controls. Firms use their resources to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Resources are critical to organizational strategy, because they can help companies create and sustain an advantage over competitors.
Organizations can achieve a competitive advantage by using their resources to provide greater value for customers than competitors can.
A competitive advantage becomes a sustainable competitive advantage when other companies cannot duplicate the value a firm is providing to customers. Importantly, sustainable competitive advantage is not the same as a long-lasting competitive advantage, though companies obviously want a competitive advantage to last a long time. Instead, a competitive advantage is sustained if that advantage still exists after competitors have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate the advantage and have, for the moment, stopped trying to duplicate it.
Four conditions must be met if a firm’s resources are to be used to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The resources must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and nonsubstitutable.