To help a firm achieve a competitive advantage, each distinct activity performed in the value chain needs to contribute to the firm's strategic position as either low-cost leader or differentiator. create a static fit between the company's internal resources and the external environment. reduce the causal ambiguity and the social complexity of the firm's source of success. reduce the immobility and the heterogeneity of the firm's resources.

Contribute to the firm's strategic position as either low-cost leader or differentiator.

Explanation:

To help a firm achieve a competitive advantage, each distinct activity performed in the value chain needs to contribute to the firm's strategic position as either low-cost leader or differentiator. In order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, a firm must either perform its activities in a different way or it should perform totally different activities as compared to their competitors. This is the basic essence and logic behind getting a sustainable competitive advantage. In order to do it, a firm must perform each activity which should contribute to the firm's position in making it either a cost effective producer of the products or making entirely different products. In this way, by either becoming cost-effective leader or differentiator in the market, a firm must gain very strong strategic position in gaining sustainable competitive advantage which will be very hard for the competitors to compete with.

you have to put the parentheses like this:

in fact, you have to perform the operation inside parentheses first, and then proceed in order:

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