Strategies For Sustaining Competitive Advantage Through Product Development: A System Engineering Framework

Competitive advantage in an industry can be achieved by strategically entering a marketplace at the right time with a product that has the appropriate cost and operational capability to match the needs and maturity of the marketplace. In products (such as software-based products) where the cost and time-to-market are primarily a function of the “intellectual” engineering process, the product development function is the source of competitive advantage. This paper introduces a system engineering framework that describes the relationship between product operational capability, development cost, and development cycle-time (time-to-market). Analysis of this relationship yields four strategies for achieving and sustaining competitive advantage through product development.