Resource-Based View (RBV)

Biological Parallel

Competitive advantage flows from unique, hard-to-replicate resources. The African elephant's trunk—versatile, dexterous, powerful—is a resource no competitor possesses. It took millions of years to evolve and can't be copied quickly. Resources create advantage only if they're valuable (solves survival problems), rare (few organisms have it), inimitable (hard to evolve independently), and organized (integrated into effective behaviors). RBV is evolutionary biology: sustainable advantage requires resources competitors can't easily acquire or imitate.