23A - Your Venture's Unfair Advantage

1.  Social Capital: access to Dr. Thompson's surgical patients. They would be referred to me for post-surgery meals.

• Valuable: Yes, my target market are those who've recently undergone oral surgery and having Dr. Thompson as a contact to refer some of his patients to me would help my business out tremendously in the beginning.
• Rare: Not necessarily, anyone with the same idea could try getting customers from other dentist offices.
• Inimitable: No, because personal relationships are unique to each person.
• Non-substitutable: Yes

2. Human Capital: I am a Business Administration Major, so the knowledge and experience would help me manage by future venture.

• Valuable: Yes, an education is always a valuable asset
• Rare: Not exactly, since almost anyone can pursue an education
• Inimitable: No, because how someone decides to apply the education they received is unique to each individual.
• Non-substitutable: The skills learned from education cannot be substituted

3. Leadership Experience: I have been a manager in my company for the past three years.

• Valuable: Yes, if I ever decided to expand, leadership experience would come in handy when hiring new people.
• Rare: No, there are plenty of people in leadership positions in all kinds of fields.
• Inimitable: No, not everyone can be a good leader and more than that each leader creates their own work culture.
• Non-substitutable: A good leader would be hard to substitute in any situation.

4. Cooking Skills: I like to cook and bake in my spare time.

• Valuable: For my venture this is extremely valuable since I would be making food for other people and when ordering food from anyplace people expect it to taste good.
• Rare: A lot of people can make good food, but not everyone can make great food.
• Inimitable: Only if the cook decides to share their recipe.
• Non-substitutable: Certain dishes are hard to recreate without prior knowledge of recipes and ingredients.

5. Personal Experience: Knowledge of food safety and regulations.

• Valuable: Yes, I don't work directly with food at my work but I work in the Fresh Food Department. Due to this I know a lot of the federal guidelines for food safety such as cold food having to remain below 41 degrees and hot food having to remain above 140 degrees after being cooked.
• Rare: Anyone who works with food in a professional setting should be aware of these regulations.
• Inimitable: Since it deals with regulations, the point is that they are followed in order to ensure that people are served the freshest food possible.
• Non-substitutable: There are no substitutions for food regulations unless you make them even stricter or you risk making someone sick

6. Social Capital: My contact with Ms. Martin who is a third-party delivery driver for the company I work at.

• Valuable: To me she is an important contact since her delivery services would be necessary if someone needed their meals delivered to their home.
• Rare: There are a number of food delivery services and though there are other options, it is not a saturated market.
• Inimitable: Again, personal relationships are hard to recreate and the rapport one builds with another person is hard to imitate.
• Non-substitutable: Again a personal relationship cannot be substituted.

7. I personally know people who've had oral surgery.

• Valuable: Yes, this gave me insight into my target market.
• Rare: No, people in the United States tend to have oral surgery at least once sometimes more than that during their lifetime either to have their wisdom teeth taken out or to get dentures.
• Inimitable: The experiences recounted to me are unique to each individual and cannot be imitated.
• Non-substitutable: Their experience cannot be substituted.

8.  Attention to detail.

• Valuable: Yes, not everyone takes the extra time to go above and beyond.
• Rare: It can be.
• Inimitable: It's an attribute that's hard to imitate.
• Non-substitutable: Yes.

9. Hard-worker

• Valuable: Always, hard work eventually pays off.
• Rare: Yes and No, there are plenty of good hard workers but it's harder to put in extra work without an incentive.
• Inimitable: Hard work cannot easily be imitated.
• Non-substitutable: Yes

10. Not having a competitive market

• Valuable: Yes, the less competition the less you have to worry about competing for customers.
• Rare: There are plenty of restaurants that deliver food to people in their work places and at home but not another company that seeks to cater to those that are on a soft-food diet (at least in my area).
• Inimitable: Since a company like mine doesn't exist in my area, it cannot be immediately imitated.
• Non-substitutable: Other restaurants offer a couple options for those seeking a soft-food diet but they don't offer a full menu which is something I would do.

After conducting the VRIN analysis, my top resource would have to be my hard work ethic. Without it, even if I had the best people working alongside and for me, I would not be able to make my venture succeed. Like I said in the VRIN analysis, hard- work eventually pays off, you just have to put in the effort in the beginning.