Benchmarking means exploring best practices. Pick any pair of rivals (such as Samsung and Sony, Nokia and Motorola, and Boeing and Airbus) and explain why one outperforms the other.  You want to benchmark key global reasons these companies outperform.  This is to be an international reflection- for example Kmart is huge in New Zealand but going bankrupt in the US.Here are some key concepts and terms to help guide you. 1.  Key Concepts Recent progress in the resource-based view has gone beyond the traditional SWOT analysis. The new work focuses on the value (V), rarity (R), imitability (I), and organizational (O) aspects of resources and capabilities, leading to a VRIO framework. Overall, only valuable, rare, and hard-to-imitate capabilities that are organizationally embedded and exploited can lead to sustained competitive advantage and persistently above-average performance. Because capabilities cannot be evaluated in isolation, the VRIO framework presents four interconnected and increasingly difficult hurdles (Exhibit 4.7). In other words, these four V, R, I, and O aspects come together as one package. 2.  Key Terms

• Ambidexterity: Ability to use one’s both hands equally well. In management jargon, this term has been used to describe capabilities to simultaneously deal with paradoxes (such as exploration versus exploitation)
• Causal ambiguity: The difficulty of identifying the actual cause of a firm’s successful performance
• Complementary asset: The combination of numerous resources and assets that enable a firm to gain a competitive advantage
• Social complexity: The socially intricate and interdependent ways that firms are typically organized
• VRIO framework: The resource-based framework that focuses on the value (V), rarity (R), imitability (I), and organizational (O) aspects of resources and capabilities