The Half-Life of Strategy: Why Advantage Decays Faster Than You Think

Once upon a time, strategy was about building moats. A clever product, a unique distribution network, a regulatory edge. Fortify it, scale it, and then enjoy a decade (or two) of relative peace while competitors scrambled to catch up.

That playbook is dead.

Today, the half-life of competitive advantage is shrinking. What once lasted ten years now erodes in three. Sometimes less. Why? Because in modern markets, the walls don’t just leak, they crumble almost as fast as you build them.

Think about it: technology diffuses instantly, not gradually. Cloud platforms, open-source AI, and low-code tools mean that whatever you invent, someone else can replicate within a quarter. Capital, too, has gone hyper-fluid. Private equity, sovereign wealth, and corporate venture arms can fund fast-followers overnight, giving latecomers the firepower to close gaps quickly. Even customers, once anchored by switching costs, now churn with a swipe. Loyalty has become transactional, not structural. And talent? It doesn’t stay put. The same people you hire to build your edge may be working for your competitor within 18 months.

So what does this mean for strategy leaders? It means that the old assumption, that you can build one moat and defend it indefinitely, no longer holds. Strategy has shifted from the art of static defense to the discipline of constant renewal.

This changes the job. Instead of asking “how do we protect this advantage for ten years?” executives must ask “how do we build, exploit, and replace this advantage in cycles of two to three?” It’s less about owning one enduring fortress and more about managing a portfolio of short-lived outposts, each one giving you just enough time to extract value before it inevitably decays.

Practically, this calls for a new operating rhythm:

• Capital allocation must be more fluid. Stop underwriting investments on decade-long assumptions; start designing for faster payback and reinvestment loops.

• Innovation cadence needs to be a KPI. It’s not enough to launch one breakthrough — you have to prove you can repeat the trick.

• Talent models must assume mobility. Build systems, not stars, so the know-how stays even when individuals move.

• Board oversight should focus less on “defensibility” and more on “renewability” — is the company designed to regenerate its advantage on demand?
  

The hard truth is that strategy, as we used to know it, has a shorter shelf life. But that’s not a cause for despair. It’s a call to rewire how organisations think about advantage itself. The winners won’t be those who build the deepest moat. They’ll be those who’ve mastered the art of replacing it, again and again, faster than anyone else.

TL;DR

Competitive advantage now decays in years, not decades.Executives must shift from building static moats to managing renewable cycles of advantage. The edge goes not to the best fortress-builder, but to the fastest fortress-replacer.