Executives emphasize different strategic capabilities in different organizations Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold, Inc. is an international mining company in North America. It claims a leading position in the mining industry on the basis of 'large, long lived, geographically diverse assets and significant proven and probable reserves of copper, gold and molybdenum'. More specifically, in terms of its Indonesian operation it points to a 'principal asset' as the 'world class Grasberg mine discovered in 1988' which has 'the world's largest single copper reserve and world's largest single gold reserve'.

Daniel Bouton, Chairman and CEO of Socit Gnrale, in response to the question: How do you maintain your competitive advantage in equity derivatives? The barrier to entry is high, because of two significant costs. The first is IT. The systems you need to perform well cost at least A200 million a year, and it's not something you can buy from Dell or SAP. The second is the sheer number of people you need to work on managing your risk. Before you launch a product, you need to have the front office guys that propose, calculate and write the first model. Then you need the IT guy that creates the IT system in order to be able to calculate risks every 10 seconds. And you need a good validating team in order to verify all the hypotheses. After that, you need high-quality middle and back office people.

Tony Hall, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House: 'world-class' is neither an idle nor boastful claim. In the context of the Royal Opera House the term refers to the quality of our people, the standards of our productions and the diversity of our work and initiatives. Unique? Unashamedly so. We shy away from labels such as 'elite', because of the obvious negative connotations of exclusiveness. But I want people to take away from here the fact that we are elite in the sense that we have the best singers, dancers, directors, designers, orchestra, chorus, backstage crew and administrative staff. We are also amongst the best in our ability to reach out to as wide and diverse a community as possible.

Dave Swift, President of Whirlpool North America: Executing our strategy requires a unique toolkit of competencies that we continue to build for our people globally. The starting point of building new competencies is what we call 'Customer Excellence' - our ability to proactively understand and anticipate the needs of customers. Customer Excellence is a collection of tools that allows our people to analytically assess and prioritize the needs and desires of customers along all aspects of the purchase cycle - from when they first might investigate an appliance on a web site, to the in-store experience on a retailer's floor, to the features and aesthetics of the product, to the installation and service experience, and ultimately to their need to repeat this cycle. With these consumer insights in-hand, we then turn them into customer solutions through our innovation tools. As a result, our innovation capability has produced a robust pipeline of products, achieving a steady-state estimated value of over $3 billion. Our knowledge of customers, coupled with our innovative customer solutions, is driving the attractiveness of our brands and creating greater value for our shareholders.

Questions:

1 Categories the range of capabilities/ competencies and approaches (resource based / value based) highlighted by the executives in the above case study.

2 Choose any of the two cases from the above case study and identify which of the capabilities might be especially important in terms of achieving competitive advantage and why?