Can a Firm Pursuing Transient Advantages in Innovation Be Successful in Competitive Markets?

A firm that is undertaking transient advantage in innovation is prosperous in competitive markets. A transient advantage refers to a business tactic that primarily focuses on fast innovation for the company to form a channel of competitive advantages. For many years, firms have sought for sustainable competitive advantage whereby they find opportunities, throw up entry barriers, and what follows is the company enjoying it for a very long time. With increased globalization and digital disruptions, the business environment is rapidly changing, and the idea of sustainable competitive advantage does not make sense anymore. Therefore, businesses must build up transient advantage where they can grasp opportunities, exhaust them, and move quickly after exploiting them since it is rare for a firm to uphold a genuinely enduring advantage.

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Transient advantage brings about unrelenting innovation which comes with enduring growth, profits, as well as the competitive advantage to the firm. Dynamic industries like photography, consumer electronics, publishing, fast-moving consumer goods, and television need a transient advantage because it prioritizes regular innovation which enables them to compete effectively. These temporary advantages keep the firm in the lead for long. For a business to remain at the edge in the market, it needs to persistently develop new strategic initiatives, build, and exploit numerous transient competitive advantages at a go.

A firm that adopts a transient advantage accepts that competitive advantages last for a short period and emphasizes on the innovative strategies to continually come up with new advantages. Today, companies are not competing in the industry as it was traditionally. Instead, companies are competing in an arena, which transcends the industry to reflect on the link between the market segment, the offer, and geography. Therefore, other than competing for leadership in the industry, a company needs to consider the resources that it wants to capture and this is only possible through a move to transient advantage. A company that is seeking a transient advantage should establish broad themes and then allow individuals experiment. Additionally, it considers metrics that maintain entrepreneurial growth as well as focusing on the experiences and answers to the problems. Transient advantage calls for strong networks and relationships because strong ties with the customers are a significant source of company advantage.

Firms pursuing transient advantage compete successfully because they rarely conduct mass firings, downsizing or restructuring but instead they continually engage in adjusting and readjusting their resources. Also, companies in transient advantage are systematic in their innovations at the early stages, searching for opportunities beyond the firm's boundaries and conducting research on how to serve customers better. Firms with a goal of transient advantage are excellent in change management. Such a company should be ready to test, iterate, and learn. Lastly, the transient advantage leaders are aware of the necessity for speed because fast and roughly correct decisions replace precise but slow deliberations, and this is a competitive edge in the market.

Firms like Milliken & company which is a textile and chemicals firm in the U.S, Cognizant, a global Information Technology services company and Brambles which is an Australian logistics company are now not of the view that business stability is a norm and they focus on sparking continuous change. The new normal for these enterprises is a transient advantage. Milliken & company saw its traditional competitors vanish by 1991 by exiting many of its textile lines gradually and at the same time investing in new technologies. In the photography business, Fuji is the leading company because it stood out from Kodak by diverting its attention to uncontrollable chemical costs and invested in opportunities that made photography less reliant on chemistry.