What are the components that comprise a sustainable competitive advantage for a firm?

 

Four components comprise a sustainable competitive advantage. According to Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson (2009), the criteria is as follows:

 

• Valuable: allow the firm to exploit opportunities or neutralize threats in its external environment
• Rare: capabilities that few, if any,competitors possess
• Costly to imitate: capabilities that other firms cannot easily develop.
• Nonsubstitutable: capabilities that do not have strategic equivalents (p. 82).