Enabling capabilities are those that, on their own, do not provide a competitive advantage but are necessary because they provide an organisation with the means/ability to operate at the same level of competitiveness as other, similar, organisations. In the case of a hospital, for example, the capability to carry out certain advanced procedures may be possessed only by leading teaching hospitals. In other words, the capability of a hospital to combine supplemental and enabling capabilities so that the resulting capability is difficult to imitate and has direct patient benefit would then constitute a core capability. Note that enabling capabilities may still be difficult for competitors to imitate.
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