Sun Tzu and sustainable competitive advantage

Abstract

Sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) has been a strategic concern to enterprises. In the era of knowledge economy, such an advantage migrates to the human-brain oriented intangible assets, or, intellectual property right (IPR). Combined with strategy, this brings up the importance of multi-disciplinary integration and business renovation in management infrastructure for the sake of SCA. Because a strong philosophical foundation is the key to the success in such a renovation, we explore the philosophical foundation for the SCA based on Tzu: The Art of War. First of all, we find that using modeling and simulation for SCA evaluation and decision-making is a modern trend of implementing Sun Tzu's concept of temple calculation. Our patent-pending works in virtual validation and verification of product specifications by modeling simulation have strategic importance in a market, which can be deemed a SCA. Second, Sun Tzu's defensive philosophy of securing ourselves first is preferable because it is a protracted combat no matter in IPR or building up company's SCA. The human-brain orientation of IPR impacts the traditional business management concepts and infrastructure, which are deemed less incentive. We found that though Sun Tzu invoked the importance of Dao to unify people and encourage people to fight, but he did provide any hint to the problem of Where does the Dao come from? nor did he provide any solution to the problem of What is the Dao that can encourage people to think and to offer the fruits of their intellectual activities? Though we have found that the ownership of IPR and the company's vision and branding strategy may be the mapping of Sun Tzu's Dao in the modern knowledge economy time, we still propose intensive researches in philosophy, especially the Chinese ancient philosophy for excavation in-depth. Finally, we notice that IPR can bring new opportunities to individuals with know-how and skill, while INTERNET and World Wide Web (WWW) along with open source software provide a new platform for innovators in education (e-learning), creating innovation and manipulating marketing and strategy with low cost. This means that open source software provides a low-cost solution for creating SCA.