Dyson's Case Question 3

Question 3

At the beginning threshold capabilities are what is required for a company to face its competitors and to achieve competitive advantages.

Two of the Dyson's distinctive capabilities may over time, become threshold capabilities:

1. Engineer design:

Dyson hires the best engineers in the county and encourages them to be creative, innovative, and be "fresh thinker". To do so the engineers are working many hours and try each time to develop new products by creating 1000s prototypes and doing many tests which leads them to solve the problems if the projects didn't work and try it again until they succeed.

And that's why they realize their competitive advantage.

As a consequence Dyson's products are considered unique and with high quality, therefore clients are willing to pay high prices to buy them.

2. innovation and technology

Dyson's investments in R&D quadrupled between 2004 and 2009, in addition the use of 120 testing stations and the special computerized technology leads the company to be distinguished from its competitors. In addition they achieve such a success with the minimum cost by implementing their manufactures in Malaysia and China to decrease the manufacturing cost and to hire other engineers.

3. The first mover advantage and secrecy

As we know sir Dyson starts his project by himself from an idea: transforming cyclone technology to vacuum cleaner. So he took the risk to do it and this is become a culture within the company (taking risk).

Moreover, the success of the company is considered as a secret as a result the company established a high level of security to protect itself from competitors which allows her to surprise them and be the first to do the first move.