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For CVS, Social Good Was Not a Factor

The Idolbuster

First mover advantage by proactively stopping tobacco sales before they need to. Healthcare providers don’t sell products that kill people. The ACA has provided a bolus of people who will need additional health care, and CVS is beginning to provide medical services right in their stores.

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Strategy in a World of Constant Change

Harvard Business Review

In it, he talked about the competitive advantage of Southwest Airlines, Vanguard Group and Progressive Insurance. To be sure, first mover advantages can vaporize quickly, but not all first mover advantages are backed by a real competitive advantage.

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Why Winner-Takes-All Thinking Doesn’t Apply to Silicon Valley

Harvard Business Review

Despite having won the desktop with the introduction of Windows in 1985, and having the first mover advantage of introducing a mobile operating system several years before Apple or Google, Microsoft has lost the battle for mobile. That is a very short run compared to the great network industries of yore.

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Why We Shouldn’t Worry About the Declining Number of Public Companies

Harvard Business Review

Such acquisitions become more lucrative with rising first-mover advantages, pace of technological development, and network externality. Consider Yahoo and Whatsapp, which were acquired by Verizon and Facebook, respectively, in multi-billion-dollar deals.

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Microsoft’s Bid to Make Outlook More than Email

Harvard Business Review

The good news for Microsoft is that it has a first-mover advantage, and can evaluate its platform partnerships to decide which third parties should be acquired, which should be exclusively available on Outlook, and which should be more tightly integrated.

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What U.S. E-Commerce Can Learn from Its Global Copycats

Harvard Business Review

We were unable to capitalize on first mover advantage. But first mover advantage is a simplistic tenet of global strategy. Frustration came quickly when we couldn''t launch localized country sites or hire teams fast enough to stay in front of the international imitators.

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It's Time to Cut Back on Social Media

Harvard Business Review

Clearly there is a first mover advantage in some cases: Chris Brogan developed a passionate following as an early blogger, and Guy Kawasaki jumped onboard Twitter and became a powerhouse there. But as I advise my clients to do, I believe everyone needs to think about which platforms best speak to your strengths.

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