Competitive Advantage

Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Miami Heat Basketball Team The Miami Heat Basketball Team is a professional team which is located in Miami, Florida in the United States of America. The team is coached by Erick Spelstra and it is managed by the Coach Pat Riley of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Sustainable competitive advantage can be understood by separating the component terms, then merge the again to have collective meaning: Sustainable means long term. Competitive means a product that is able to maintain itself against other competing products due to its value for money proposition to its buyers. Advantage refers to a more favorable opportunity for success. Sustainable competitive advantage therefore refers to a long term advantage that competitors cannot copy or surpass easily. Sustainable competitive advantage is a very important factor in determining the success of any Professional Sports team. Every sports team always strives to be the market leader in the competitive sports industry. The only way through which the Miami Heat Basketball Team can achieve competitive advantage is through some effort to gain leverage over other players in the same field. This can be done through ensuring Miami Heat Basketball Team has adequately skilled motivated and industrious players in its team. The most important value or resource for such a success is a ‘team’ (Scott, 2010). The contemporary world is too unstable. The only long term competitive advantage one can have is a team. It is the competitive advantages that has enabled the Miami Heat Basketball Team to seven Division Titles and win the NBA finals against the Dallas Mavericks in 2006. It is therefore a fact that the success of the Miami Heat Basketball ball Team is not only attributed to the players but also to other team characteristics such as good coaching skills, a very huge and well established fan base and the sophisticated style and tactics used by these players. Therefore, the management of this basketball plays a big role in ensuring the overall success of this team through helping the less talented team members to succeed. The team member’s of Miami Heat Basketball team help one another to achieve greater results by maximizing potential (Bricey, 2010). The concept of a winning team cannot hold if it is not based on any principles. We therefore need to assess the components that make a winning team. First, there is need to inculcate strong leadership in a team. The members of the team have to clearly comprehend the leader’s dream and enthusiasm. The team has to determine to pursue a common purpose which should be clearly communicated and understood by all. Very important also, the team should be able to observe the governing rules of the game in order to win. The team always aught to have a proper strategy/plan guided by timelines and goal expectations. A good team needs to operate on democratic principles. This means that every opinion is considered in decision making and the coach’s view is not always taken as the best. In so doing, there is support risk taking and also advocacy for 100% inclusion of the team members (Scott, 2010). The four criteria of sustainable competitive advantage in the sports industry include possession of distinctive capabilities by a team, h...