3. How should an organization sustain a competitive advantage? When two or more firms compete within the same market, one firm possesses a competitive advantage over its rivals when it earns (or has the potential to earn) a persistently higher rate of profit (Grant, 2013).

How a strategic business unit (or SBU) creates value for its users, which is both greater than the costs of supplying that value and superior to that of rival SBUs (Johnson et al., 2014), is reflected in and accrues from perceived differences and real cost advantages, both of these relative to competitors (Thompson and Martin, 2010).