The four competitive strategies that businesses employ to differentiate themselves from their competitors are cost leadership, differentiation, focus, and innovation. Cost leadership is a strategy where the business focuses on becoming the low-cost producer in its industry while maintaining acceptable levels of quality. Differentiation involves developing unique products or services that customers perceive as being superior in value compared to those offered by competitors. Focus involves concentrating efforts on specific markets or segments with tailored products or services offering higher perceived value than similar offerings from other firms. Finally, innovation involves creating new technologies and processes that give a firm an edge over others in terms of time to market, product features and capabilities, cost structure, etc. Each of these strategies has advantages and disadvantages depending upon the particular circumstances faced by each individual company; however when properly implemented they can provide companies with lasting competitive advantage for years to come.