23A – Your Venture’s Unfair Advantage

What Makes You So Special?

BeyondKash

1. Previous sales and marketing experience. I developed these skills as part of publishing my own book and advertising through amazon and at in-person events.

- Valuable: This is extremely valuable as in any business or start-up, you need to have a specific marketing staff, or understand how to properly target your audience. 

- Rare: This is pretty rare as people may believe they have marketing experience or understand how to advertise, but in reality you learn these skills along with facing the challenges and difficulties when actually having to generate traffic for something.

- Inimitable- Although very useful, this skill is particularly easily to be replicated, and should be, in order to help the business or company grow and expand to target more customers. 

- Non-substitutable- I believe there are no other resources that can provide you with this experience and are only other resources to help simplify or teach you the process of marketing a product/service. 

2. Thinking through potential consequences (positive and negative) of each event, action or change before it's implemented. 

- Valuable: I believe this skill is valuable as it's part of my human capital to want to understand what will happen if something is adjusted, added or changed. This is helpful in shortening the research and development process of creating a product/service.

- Rare: Surprisingly, I believe this skill is more rare then people think, as plenty of businesses test during the R&D phases and do not fully understand the potential consequences or setbacks that may results from it. 

- Inimitable: I believe that, with effort, this skill can be replicated and used to the advantage of a business to help with determining what actually works. This ultimately saves a lot of valuable time and money that could be ventured onto other aspects of the product/service. 

- Non-substitutable: I believe there no other similar resources that can offer you such insight into your research and development due to the product/service design being unique to each specific business. This skill is helping companies to understand the potential outcomes before observed, which could limit time on testing new resources and ultimately spending money.

3. Web design and advertising. I learned how to properly create a website to advertise a product when learning how to professionally market to your target audience. 

- Valuable: I believe this skill is very valuable when it comes to helping grow your social capital, as websites are very expensive to buy and learning how to properly build one can limit your fees and help efficiently market your product.

- Rare: I do think that this skill is rare because of the effort needed to create a website, and how it's virtually easier to pay the expensive fees in order to have someone create one for you. 

- Inimitable: Yes, this skill is replicable but requires effort and years of practice, research and learning to ultimately understand how to create an efficient website like those offered, for a high-rate, by companies such as Wix.com. 

- Non-substitutable: There are definitely other resources to help create and design a website to market a specific product or service easier, but learning the skills will offer huge financial returns as well as true insight onto what's going on in the advertising market. 

4. Being able to communicate on a professional level. I gained experience on this skill after interning for a summer with a law firm.

- Valuable: This skill is valuable for every type of business as the main way anything will get done is through communications. Whether is be communicating with customers, partners, employees, or manufacturers, having proper and professional communication will help influence whatever to listen and want to comply with you. 

- Rare: This skill is somewhat rare because many business owners and their employees are failed to be taught how to properly communicate with customers in their market opportunity, and this leads potential buyers to chose similar products/services elsewhere. 

- Inimitable: I believe this skill can be easily learned or copied and can make a difference in gaining traffic for a particular product/service. Although not being 'rare', knowing how to properly communicate takes effort and time, but will definitely increase your businesses appearance and will leave a good reputation within customers. 

- Non-substitutable: There are no other resources that can provide similar benefits as communication, as it's important nowadays in our society to know how to properly talk with a customer, supplier or employee, or else nothing will ever get done. 

5. Finding and creating connections with similar businesses. 

- Valuable: This skill is extremely valuable as learning how similar businesses interact within the same opportunity gives insight to start-up companies on what works in terms of advertising, generating traffic and earning a profit. 

- Rare: This skill wouldn't seem rare as anyone can go out and talk to competing businesses, but ultimately creating a bond and working with one another is a unique attribute to contributing to expanding your business and audience.   

- Inimitable: I believe this skill is not easily able to be copied by others companies as most look at their competing businesses as rivals and don't necessarily believe their differentiator will generate them enough traffic to compete. 

- Non-substitutable: There are no resources that offer the same benefits that come from creating these connections with other businesses in your opportunity market. 

6. Knowledge of a product/service and it's current market.

- Valuable: Knowing a lot about a specific market helps new businesses target the aspects which they see generating a lot of traffic. This helps them add a unique factor to offer a 'better' version of what's currently available that will bring in those current customers. 

- Rare: This skill is not considered rare anymore as current technology allows anyone the ability to study what's making a specific market do well, and what aspects of a company are gaining a lot of attention from customers in the same opportunity. 

- Inimitable: I believe, with the right resources and effort, anyone can go out and study a market and how its customers are reacting. Although, I also believe that not anyone will make use of the information, find what increases the demand, and create a unique difference that will draw in the same customers to a 'better' product/service. 

- Non-substitutable: There are no specific resources that offer all knowledge in a single opportunity, but there are resources that can be utilized to help eliminate a lot of the time spent studying and understanding what's going on in a specific market. 

7. Using social media to your advantage. 

- Valuable: I believe this skill is valuable in knowing how to navigate social media platforms because they can be utilized for advertising, employee searching, testing/R&D, and learning user feedback on problems with current competitors in your market. 

- Rare: This skill is surprisingly rare as social media platforms have seen a boom in the last decade and having experienced and trained staff, or knowing how to operate yourself through such systems, can give you a competitive advantage over rivals. 

- Inimitable: I believe, as the resources continue to grow, this skill will be able to be easily copied by others due to amount of users, traffic and other markets already utilizing such tactics to target and expand their businesses. 

- Non-substitutable: There are no other specific resources that offer a wide variety of platforms, such as social media foundations, that are full of users interested in finding products and other ways to simplify or solve their daily life problems. 

8. Not having the willingness to give up. 

- Valuable: This skill is extremely valuable in any business situation as people who are not willing to give up easily are determined to find a solution to any problem that the business faces. These employees/business owners are the ones who defy negativity and advice from others to persevere and become the most successful. 

- Rare: This skill is rare because people generally give up when faced with a problem, and some may find a solution to that problem, but then are faced with another and give up. People without the willingness to just give up and not show effort, are the ones who become successful and teach others how to follow their paths. 

- Inimitable: I believe this skill is not something that can be easily copied. Many people naturally believe they're determined, but when faced with a challenging problem, or more than one, they either give up or freak out when the answer isn't obvious. 

- Non-substitutable: There are definitely no other similar resources that can be used to replicate the benefits of having the characteristic of not willing to give up. This is typically because it's a natural personality trait that some people posses more than others, not something that can be easily taught or learned. 

9. Financial support.

- Valuable: I believe this skill is very valuable to starting any type of business or company as the main failure of start-ups is not being able to generate enough finances to continue with the R&D and ultimately finalizing your product/service.

- Rare: I believe this ability is rare to have at the beginning of the company, as many business owners are working with limited out-of-pocket funds or risking everything they have just to start-up.

- Inimitable: I believe having this opportunity is not easily copied and is dependent on person-to-person.

- Non-substitutable: There are many other resources that could substitute financial support, as owners can apply for loans, pawn valuable items, or even search for financial investors in return for a percentage owned of the company. 

10. Finding a unique differentiator. 

- Valuable: Being able to find something that makes your product/service unique from other companies is extremely valuable allows customers to have multiple options when surveying which to buy. 

- Rare: This skill is rare to posses as most business owners/entrepreneurs have trouble coming up with something unique to slightly improve or change a product and call it their own. 

- Inimitable: I believe this skill is not easily copied and can't be taught to others, as only people who are naturally more creative have an advantage over others.

- Non-substitutable: I believe there are also many different opportunities to change a current product/service to make it unique besides it's physical attributes or natural abilities. For example, being able to manufacture one specific part cheaper already offers you an advantage over current competing companies.

Reflection:

After conducting the VRIN analysis with each of my resources, I believe that the resource that will benefit me the most is being able to find a unique differentiator within current products/services to ultimately make easier an everyday issue. Some businesses focus on creating a solution and being innovative for a new problem that people are facing, while others focus on fixing a current problem/solution that people face in a more efficient way. These companies are trying to triumph the market in their own way and having the ability to think about a current product that solves an issue, and offer a unique addition/difference to make it personalized and attract more customers, is something that I believe can be extremely useful in the business world. I believe this skill is more effective then the other resources listed, as this skill is something I believe is unique to me and can help improve/modernize current products or services to be more applicable for todays generations and societal standards.