An economist would tell her that she should take actions that maximize profit, a technically correct but useless piece of advice. In the economics textbook it is simple: choose the rate of output Q that provides the biggest gap between revenue and cost. In the real world, however, “maximize profit” is not a helpful prescription, because the challenge of making, or maximizing, profit is an ill-structured problem.

A very powerful resource position produces profit without great effort, and it is human nature that the easy life breeds laxity. It is also human nature to associate current profit with recent actions, even though it should be evident that current plenty is the harvest of planting seasons long past.

But unless you can buy companies for less than they are worth, or unless you are specially positioned to add more value to the target than anyone else can, no value is created by such expansion.

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.

Integration is not always a good idea. When a company can buy perfectly good products and services from outside suppliers, it is usually wasteful to go through the expense and trouble of mastering a new set of business operations. However, when the core of a business strategy requires the mutual adjustment of multiple elements, and especially when there is important learning to be captured about interactions across business elements, then it may be vital to own and control these elements of the business mix.