RESOURCE-BASED VIEW
RBV assumes firms are fundamentally different in what they control.
Heterogeneity
The only IT-related source in the article that can potentially generate sustained competitive advantage.
Managerial capability
Albert Heijn’s Bonus Card mainly builds this economic mechanism.
Switching costs
A resource that competitors can easily buy on the market cannot create sustained advantage because it lacks this property.
Immobility
A resource that fails as a long-term advantage because financial markets reduce scarcity.
Capital
Harrah’s CRM system creates advantage primarily through superior customer-level understanding.
Analytics
When outsiders cannot clearly trace how a firm’s IT creates performance gains.
Causal ambiguity
A resource that is often codified, transferable, and therefore strategically fragile.
Technical skills
Evol’s hiring system reduces managerial guesswork by improving this.
Information
An advantage that depends on trust, culture, and informal routines between departments.
Social complexity
A protection mechanism that patents attempt to provide but rarely fully achieve in IT.
Proprietary
KLM’s Meet & Seat app competes through service-based market positioning.
Differentiation
An advantage that exists because of long-term accumulation and sequencing of decisions.
Path dependence
According to the article, technology by itself is strategically insufficient without this element.
Management
If competitors copy the visible technology but not the internal routines, the remaining advantage lies in this.
Capability