Flexible competence for sustainable competitive advantage: strategies enlightenment derived from a case study of China Unicom

As rapid pervasive technological and business changes continue to challenge the survival and development of a firm, this paper indicates that flexible competence is extremely important for sustaining competitive advantages in such evolving environment. This paper proposes a case study of China Unicom, which was an entrant in China cellular service market in 1994 but now has become the 3rd largest telecommunication carrier in face of intensive competition from the incumbents, the results of the case study enlighten us that flexible competence of a firm mainly involve such factors: to analyze and evaluate the external environment; to divide firm´s development stages, to alter the competitive strategies for flexible competence.