Operational excellence is not a sustainable competitive advantage.
In a business context this means it is foolhardy to believe that your company will maintain a superior position vis a vis your competitors, because you are “excellent” (e.g. competent, efficient, smart) at doing what you do. There are a lot of smart people in the world. If you make enough money off being excellent, other smart, competent people will come along and copy what you are doing, and whoops, there goes your advantage.

—Hallie Montoya Tansey: What I learned in my MBA Strategy class, as applied to campaigns. 

newschallenge:

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]

Provide a comprehensive dataset of geo-referenced federal, state, and county ballot information, accessible through a free, open source API.

2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30 words]

Existing sources…

(Source: newschallenge1)

newschallenge:

1. What do you propose to do?

Build a way for networks of citizens to crowdfund ad campaigns via social media for important civic news and information.

2. Is anyone else doing something like this now, and how is your project different?

While Kickstarter and others crowdfund projects, LoudSauce…

(Source: newschallenge1)