The “moat” concept comes from Warren Buffett and his investment philosophy. He borrowed the medieval castle metaphor – just as a moat around a castle protects it from invaders, an “economic moat” protects a business from competitors.
Buffett looks for companies with wide, durable moats – competitive advantages that are hard for others to replicate or overcome. Things like:
- Strong brand loyalty (Coca-Cola)
- Network effects (the more people use it, the more valuable it becomes)
- High switching costs (enterprise software)
- Economies of scale
- Regulatory advantages
- Unique assets or data
The idea is that even if competitors try to attack your business, the moat makes it extremely difficult and expensive for them to succeed.
In your medical network’s case, the moat is that 20-year foundation of trust relationships – something a new competitor can’t just build overnight. Google has information, but they don’t have two decades of doctors saying “I trust this source with my patients’ lives.”
The strategic question becomes: how do you deepen that moat (make the trust advantage even stronger) while also making sure it doesn’t become irrelevant due to changing customer behavior?
How does design factor in?
Design is an important element of this, not only brand design but application design and a strategic design plan. If you know your users, and your competition, you can strengthen your fortifications and make it harder for competitors to recreate a single piece of your advantage. They have to copy the whole system.
A successful moat means you slow down your competition and also give yourself time to innovate and conquer new territory!
It’s a really useful framework for thinking about sustainable competitive advantage versus just temporary market position.
