Successful businesses have strong competitive advantages. Competitive advantages include the attributes of your product or service which competitors find difficult to copy. For example, the quality of your staff: their skills, attitudes and relationships with customers; and the innovative features that constitute the intellectual property of the business.

There are 4 basic approaches to gaining a competitive advantage which can be applied to most types of innovations. These are:

• become the low-cost supplier
• develop differentiated, innovative products and services
• target a niche: geography, industry, product/service
• employ differentiated business methods and approaches.

To successfully differentiate your product, service or business model, it must be:

• important – deliver a valued benefit to a large proportion of buyers
• distinctive – offered only by your business or very different from other businesses
• superior – the offer must be better than any other technologies or processes which provide the same benefit
• communicable – customers must see the benefit and communicate it to others easily
• protected – the difference must not be easily copied by competitors
• affordable – the customer must be able to afford the benefit
• profitable – the business must benefit from introducing the benefit.

Also consider...

• Learn more about identifying your competitive advantage.