The Myth of Sustainable Advantage

This picture taken today at Intelligentsia Coffee in Venice Beach--the epicenter of Silicon Beach and West LA creatives--documents Apple's shift from the countercultural to the mainstream. Every visible device is either a MacBook or an iPhone, and my own Mac Air is not visible in the shot. I would not be the first to wonder whether Apple's competitive advantage among creatives is sustainable given the firm's dominance of the field. Can something remain countercultural even when it becomes dominant?This brings up questions about the nature of competitive advantage itself. Professor Michael Porter famously framed strategy as being about the search for "sustainable competitive advantage;" but, more recent writers (see Rita Gunther McGrath's book on the subject, ironically published by the same source as Porter's work) are acknowledging the death of sustainable advantage:

"It’s every company’s holy grail. And it’s no longer relevant for more and more companies."

Worse, believing in the myth of sustainable advantage explains the demise of so many once storied companies, and why so many firms touted by Tom Peters in his landmark 1982 book, In Search of Excellence, were gone within a decade. And in this is the lesson for our private, independent school clients: don't ever succumb to the belief that what makes you successful today will do so tomorrow. Rather than seeking a sustainable advantage, maybe the better alternative is to be on a constant search for advantage wherever it can be found.