2020
19 Business Moats
That Helped Shape
The World’s Most
Massive Companies
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3
19 Business Moats That Helped Shape
The World’s Most Massive Companies
Table of Contents
Network Effect Moats
6
Cost Moats
29
Cultural Moats
45
Resource Moats
57
The New Moats
72
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19 Business Moats That Helped Shape
The World’s Most Massive Companies
What do companies like Amazon, Uber, and Starbucks have in common?
Among several shared characteristics, these companies thrive by
understanding, building, and strengthening their business moats —
the key competitive advantages that set them apart.
Warren Buffett helped popularize the concept, saying a company’s
moat (or lack thereof) means everything when deciding to invest in it:
“The key… is not assessing how much an
industry is going to affect society, or how
much it will grow, but rather determining
the competitive advantage of any given
company and, above all, the durability of
that advantage.”
Companies can build moats by strengthening their brands,
achieving economies of scale, or even lobbying for special status
from the government. In return, they can receive customer loyalty,
pricing power, and legal protections that make it difficult for other
companies to compete with them.
A business moat is a key competitive
advantage that sets a company apart from
its competitors. From Amazon and Uber to
Starbucks and Disney, here are how 19 of
the world’s biggest companies have built
and defended their moats.
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19 Business Moats That Helped Shape
The World’s Most Massive Companies
In the 20th century, the biggest companies in the world were built
on moats of economies of scale or government. Standard Oil,
for example