A DISTINCT ADVANTAGE

Defining Modern Competitive Advantage for Your Environment

Competitive advantage isn’t what it used to be.

The same forces that once rewarded scale, control, and efficiency now punish them. Markets move continuously, technology reshapes industries overnight, and expectations evolve faster than organizations can plan. In this world, advantage is no longer a position to defend — it is a pursuit to maintain.

A Distinct Advantage defines that pursuit and outlines the modern approach required to master it. Tom Mawhinney shows why advantage must evolve and what it now demands from leaders. At the center of that evolution is modern competitive advantage — the ability of an organization to stay coherent and relevant amid speed, complexity, and convergence.

Modern competitive advantage shifts the focus from results to the disciplines that create them: leadership, strategy, and technology — the new levers of performance that determine how every other capability operates. When these forces move together through a repeatable pursuit of advantage, organizations become dynamic, resilient, and distinct.

This is not a framework to follow but an approach to practice — a deliberate way of working that keeps organizations coherent while everything around them accelerates.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

Written for boards, executives, and founders, A Distinct Advantage speaks to leaders responsible for performance and relevance. Whether guiding an established enterprise or scaling a new venture, the same truth applies: modern competitive advantage is now the defining measure of leadership and success — and this book provides the approach for pursuing it.

The world has changed. Competitive advantage hasn’t vanished — it has evolved.

A Distinct Advantage shows how the pursuit of advantage must evolve as well.