I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about competitive advantage. Like most people, I did a search on the term "competitive advantage." What I got back was lot information that was soaked in cliché. The problem isn't with the clichés per se (I wax poetic), it's the fact that among all of the clichés, there really wasn't much guidance or useful information.
Oh well, I guess I'll have to get back to reading "Blue Ocean Strategy." A number of people have recommended the book, but I'm not convinced that it really says anything new or different than the old standards like Porter and Drucker. For example, below is list of "don't do's" and "should do's" from a reviewer of "Blue Ocean Strategy" on Amazon:
"1. DO NOT compete in existing market space. INSTEAD you should
create uncontested market space.
2. DO NOT beat the competition. INSTEAD you should make the
competition irrelevant.
3. DO NOT exploit existing demand. INSTEAD you should create and
capture new demand.
4. DO NOT make the value/cost trade-off. INSTEAD you should break the
value/cost trade-off.
5. DO NOT align the whole system of a company's activities with its
strategic choice of differentiation or low cost. INSTEAD you should
align the whole system of a company's activities in pursuit of both
differentiation and low cost."
"Don't do's" and "should do's" are fine, but they're also usually very logical and generally well understood. The problem with many books in this genre is that the author(s) don't really provide much in the way of "how to." I suspect that's because "how to" is a lot harder than "don't do's" and "should do's" and it requires real business experience.