Move Fast and Break Things: AI to secure competitive advantages!

In an ever-changing business environment, companies not only are competing to acquire a substantial market share but also are involved in securing a competitive advantage. However, the old philosophy of maintaining lead is more difficult than reaching the top significantly applies here. Companies, these days secure competitive advantage but fail to transform it into a sustainable competitive advantage. Now what actually is a sustainable competitive advantage and how it differs from a temporary competitive advantage?

The terms, themselves, are self-explanatory where temporary competitive advantage doesn’t last long and is imitable whereas sustainable competitive advantage lasts longer and establishes the unique position of the companies in the market. Such a unique position of companies correlates with the struggle for acquiring unique resources and such unique resources of the current era are certainly the Internet of Things (IoT)!

But can technologies replace humans? More about this on this page .

Artificial intelligence through IoT provides real-time algorithms for analyzing consumer demands and managing inventory and related tasks. Companies these days are speeding up to keep up. Looking for instance at Amazon, AI accounts for 35% of the company’s revenue where its AI features are projected to increase consumer engagement by 40%. Similarly, Tencent, the gaming giant in China has recognized the opportunity of 30% digital ad growth in China and adopted AI in marketing. Frito Lay, a champion in the food and beverages industry, utilized AI as a hedge against the COVID-19 pandemic and ramped up its five years digital plan in 30 days. Artificial Intelligence, has certainly eliminated the information gaps within organizations where 84% of executives already agree that AI adoption has not only maximized their work efficiency, can personalize the consumer experience, can make transactions more secure, and more importantly, it is equipped with behavioural pattern detection that can act as a smart tool for future demand forecasting proving to be another unbeatable source of sustainable competitive advantage.

 

References:

Amazon, n.d. Real-time personalization and recommendation | Amazon Personalize | AWS. [online] Amazon Web Services, Inc. Available at: <https://aws.amazon.com/personalize/> [Accessed 28 September 2022].

Hancock, T., 2017. Tencent to use AI and games to push under-developed ads business. [online] Ft.com. Available at: <https://www.ft.com/content/ba0f18ea-97b2-11e7-a652-cde3f882dd7b> [Accessed 28 September 2022].

Huang, K., Dyerson, R., Wu, L. and Harindranath, G., 2015. From Temporary Competitive Advantage to Sustainable Competitive Advantage. British Journal of Management, 26(4), pp.617-636.

Kolbjornsrud, V., Amico, R. and Thomas, R., 2016. How Artificial Intelligence Will Redefine Management. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-artificial-intelligence-will-redefine-management> [Accessed 28 September 2022].

Marr, B., n.d. How Amazon Uses Artificial Intelligence: The Flywheel Approach | Bernard Marr. [online] Bernard Marr & Co. Available at: <https://bernardmarr.com/how-amazon-uses-artificial-intelligence-the-flywheel-approach/> [Accessed 28 September 2022].

McKendrick, J., 2021. AI Adoption Skyrocketed Over the Last 18 Months. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2021/09/ai-adoption-skyrocketed-over-the-last-18-months> [Accessed 28 September 2022].