100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

100 GREAT BUSINESS IDEAS • 183

could be trained to make repairs. Canon’s approach meant Xerox
failed to sustain its competitive advantage.

Business success is determined by whether resources strengthen
or decline, complement or undermine each other, take from or are
eroded by competitors.

In practice

Three basic issues need to be addressed: why performance is
following its current path, where current policies and strategy will
lead, and how the future can be altered for the better. Several steps
will help address these issues:

1. Identify resources and understand how they behave. You do
   not have to possess a resource for it to be useful. Consider the
   following questions:
   
   
   • What are the most signifi cant resources in your
     organization?
   
   
   • How many of these resources do you have?
   
   
   • How do they interact and affect each other? In particular, how
     do they affect the quantity and quality of other resources?
   
   
   
   


2. Consider the impact that people have on this system:
   
   
   • Do you use people to build, develop, retain, and use
     resources?
   
   
   • Do you ensure that people enhance the quality of your
     resources?
   
   
   
   


3. Understand how resources affect performance.


4. Develop new resources in your business.