78 M C K I N S EY Q UA RT E R LY - - - 4 Boost Your Return on Competitive Advantage A genuine competitive advantage is sustain able over time. An event or trend can suddenly create a growth opportunity—as the pandemic did for videoconferencing apps—but a company needs a competitive advantage to maintain a market lead as new entrants emerge and competition evolves. Successful businesses regenerate their advantages over time and apply them broadly, especially to the most attractive market opportunities. For example, investments in customer-relationship-management (CRM) systems targeted at capturing and feeding customer insights to R&D or a culture of internal collaboration can expand an organization’s capabil ities as competition evolves. Sources of advantage that are transferable across markets provide an additional strategic edge. Having a deep technical capability in one type of manufacturing is quite different from having a cul ture of engineering and operations excellence. The former helps the organization win narrowly, while the latter can enable it to expand into growing markets. Investing in renewable and transferable forms of advantage creates the highest returns and is often what determines long-term value. As the erosion of competitive advantage accelerates, organizations that identify and extend their advantages enjoy both outsize growth and lower risk. Strategy’s Blind Spot