Is Patient Capital The Ultimate Competitive Advantage?

"Recently, when Page was challenged on an earnings call about the sums he was pouring into R&D, he made no effort to excuse it. "My struggle in general is to get people to spend money on long-term R&D," he said, noting that the amounts he was investing were modest in light of Google's profits. Then he chided the financial community: Shouldn't they be asking him to make more big, risky, long-term investments, not fewer?"

The struggle to build a long term capital base coupled with patience and the right incentives might be the ultimate competitive advantage.