Companies describe their advantages in terms of what they do better. The more useful question concerns how long the difference survives once competitors decide to close it.
Duration determines the return on the investment
Building an advantage costs money and time, and the return is whatever is earned during the period before the advantage is neutralised.
A large advantage that lasts a season may be worth less than a modest one that persists for a decade, because the second accumulates.
This is why strategy work concentrates on what prevents imitation rather than on the strength of the current position.
Features are copied faster than structures
A product improvement can be observed by anyone who buys the product, and competitors with similar capability will replicate it within a normal development cycle.
Advantages built into how a company is structured are harder to copy because imitation requires changing something the competitor has already committed to.
A rival can add a feature without disturbing anything else, and cannot rebuild its cost base or its distribution arrangements the same way.
Some advantages strengthen with use
Positions where each additional customer improves the offer for the next one are durable, because a competitor starting later faces a worse version of the same product.
Learning effects work similarly, where accumulated volume produces knowledge that cannot be purchased and can only be acquired by doing the work.
These take time to establish and are correspondingly difficult to dislodge, which is why companies holding them tolerate long unprofitable periods to build them.
Switching costs decide whether customers can leave
Where changing supplier requires migrating data, retraining staff or renegotiating contracts, customers stay through periods when a rival is genuinely better.
The advantage belongs to the incumbent regardless of current product quality, which is why established suppliers can lose on features and keep the account.
The same mechanism works against the incumbent when acquiring anyone else's customers, so it is a defensive position rather than a growth one.
Advantages expire when the conditions change
Most positions rest on assumptions about technology, regulation or how customers buy, and those assumptions have limited lives.
An advantage built on controlling distribution weakens once customers can buy directly, and one built on scale weakens when the minimum efficient scale falls.
Companies that examine what would have to be true for their advantage to disappear generally see the change earlier than those that measure only how well the current position is performing.