Creating Competitive Advantage: The Sustainable Value Model

Until the 1980s most companies believed higher quality meant higher costs. Japanese players demonstrated that it was possible to achieve higher quality and lower costs simultaneously. Today companies across a range of industries are finding that they can achieve high quality, fast speed to market, high customer service and low cost all at the same time. The leaders of tomorrow will demonstrate the same thing about stakeholder and shareholder value. Integrating the full range of stakeholders into strategic and operational decisionmaking will become best practice. Today, courageous business leaders can already create competitive advantage by understanding their key stakeholders’ interests, anticipating societal expectations and using the insight, skills and relationships developed through this process to design new products and services, shape new markets, develop new business models, and ultimately reshape the business context itself to one that supports the creation of truly sustainable value.