What is your competitive edge? How is your company different from all others? In what way does it stand out? Is there sustainable value that you can maintain and develop over time? The most classic of the competitive edges are those based on proprietary technology and protected by patents. A patent, an algorithm, even deeply entrenched know-how, can be a solid competitive edge. In services, however, the edge can be as simple as having the phone number 1 (800) Flowers, which is an actual case. A successful company was built around that phone number.
Sometimes market share and brand acceptance are just as important. Know-how does not have to be protected by patent to offer a competitive edge.
For example, some of these values might lead to competitive edge:
- Quick loading pages--2 seconds vs. 12 seconds, 8 seconds being the average. For example, Buy.com's average load time is 2-4 seconds. This has certainly been the case with Yahoo!, it consistently loads in a very quick amount of time.
- Fresh content. e.g., major news sites. This is less of a concern to readers of theonion.com or e-zine sites, where the expectation is that content will be updated on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
- Marketing leverage. For example, zoom.com is owned by NBCi, a subsidiary of NBC, the major national television network. NBC directs traffic in NBCi's direction. The National Football League site at NFL.com generates traffic by linking to football broadcasts with live interaction.
- Trust. A community where people feel free to post their thoughts and concerns will have a competitive advantage based on trust. New posts and new ideas bring them back to your site. Fool.com, for example, has mastered the art of building a network of users. They have dozens of custom email newsletters, some of which feature the most popular message board posts for that day.
The competitive edge might be different for any given company, even between one company and another in the same industry. You don’t have to have a competitive edge to run a successful business--hard work, integrity, and customer satisfaction can substitute for it--but any edge will certainly give you a head start if you need to bring in new investment. Maybe it’s your customer base, as in the case with Hewlett-Packard’s traditional relationship with engineers and technicians, or maybe it’s image and awareness, such as with Compaq. Maybe your competitive edge is quality control and consistency, like that of IBM.
