The Cant-Wont Test
The sustainability test for a How to Win: can competitors not copy your advantage, or won't they? Can't: replication is genuinely out of reach, proprietary assets, compounding data, regulatory position, capability depth built over years (Must-Have Capabilities). Won't: rivals could copy you, but doing so would contradict their own strategy or economics.
Can't: replication is genuinely out of reach, proprietary assets, compounding data, regulatory position, capability depth built over years (Must-Have Capabilities).
Won't: rivals could copy you, but doing so would contradict their own strategy or economics. Four Seasons' long-tenured, highly invested staff is copyable in principle, but a cost-led competitor won't, because it would break their model.
If a well-resourced rival could copy you tomorrow and would obviously want to, the advantage is a head start, not a moat.
The deep mechanism behind "won't" is Integration: single choices are imitable; a reinforcing system of choices requires becoming a different company.
Failing this test while passing The Opposite Test means you made a real choice that won't stay yours, expect convergence, then price competition, the endpoint of Operational Excellence Is Not Strategy.
Our synthesis of Roger Martin’s published work, sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
Reading about method is not the same as running it. We install this system and build the capability that stays.
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