It isn’t. Really, strategy is about making specific choices to win in the marketplace. According to Mike Porter, author of Competitive Strategy, perhaps the most widely respected book on strategy ever written, a firm creates a sustainable competitive

advantage over its rivals by “deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver unique value.” Strategy therefore requires making explicit choices—to do some things and not others—and building a business around those choices.

To determine how to win, an organization must decide what will enable it to create unique value and sustainably deliver that value to customers in a way that is distinct from the firm’s competitors. Michael Porter called it competitive advantage—the specific way a firm utilizes its advantages to create superior value for a consumer or a customer and in turn, superior returns for the firm.

No one has an advantage at everything. Teams, organizations, and even nations have advantages in certain kinds of rivalry under particular conditions. The secret to using advantage is understanding this particularity. You must press where you have advantages and side-step situations in which you do not. You must exploit your rivals’ weaknesses and avoid leading with your own.

Claims in advertising or sales pitches that a particular IT system or product or training program will provide a competitive advantage are misusing the term since an “advantage” on sale to all comers is a contradiction in terms.

For Stewart Resnick, and now for me, a competitive advantage is interesting when one has insights into ways to increase its value. That means there must be things you can do, on your own, to increase its value.