#competitive-advantage

#competitive-advantage

BRIAN KENNY: Welcome to Cold Call, the podcast where we dive deep into the groundbreaking ideas in Harvard Business School case studies. Today on Cold Call, we're looking at a sport where innovation doesn't come from flash or funding, but from rethinking first principles. The sport is speed skating and we're dropping this episode during the 2026 Winter Olympics. The US men's Speed Skating team is coming off years of disappointment, searching for a breakthrough in the team pursuit event. The innovation works.

Data science and artificial intelligence are fundamentally redefining what constitutes skill in investment management, shifting the sources of sustainable competitive advantage in ways most firms have yet to comprehend. This is not about automating existing workflows. It is about reconceptualizing which analytical tasks can be systematized and which genuinely require human judgment, then rebuilding investment processes around that distinction. Firms that fail to recognize this depth are not simply adopting tools more slowly. They are misunderstanding the nature of the change itself.

With a market cap of almost $3 trillion, Alphabet is one of the largest companies in the world. However, the tech leader has growth prospects that would make corporations a tenth of its size blush. First, Alphabet's core business remains an incredible opportunity. The company dominates the digital ads market thanks to Google and YouTube, which are the leading platforms in their respective niches and among the most popular websites worldwide.

In 2025, customers demand instant answers and consistent service. If your team leaves voicemails, others are closing deals with 24/7 intelligent outreach powered by AI.

Your competitive advantage isn't just what you think makes your restaurant special-it's what your target customers believe makes you irreplaceable in their lives.

Developed by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, blue ocean strategy suggests focusing on new markets rather than competing directly in saturated ones for maximum opportunity.

If you want to go beyond simple prompts and use AI across your business, try 1min.AI. This single AI platform pulls together some of the most popular AI models like GPT-4.0 and Midjourney.