Google is a perfect example of technology being a competitive advantage. The PageRank algorithm is both simple and elegant in its domain, yet the numerical methods to compute it efficiently are much more complicated than your typical social startup's. They had a patent on the technique from day one and the competition took years to catch up.
You can similarly point to the big database companies. Building a good acid compliant SQL database is hard and the big database companies had the market cornered for a very long time.
More recently, we have companies like Palantir which provide very sophisticated algorithms to their clients. Some algorithms are not just complicated from a software point of view, but you also need to understand the math to replicate them. It's not possible to reproduce them over the weekend even for an expert the domain.
The other things you listed are also very important, of course. But technology itself can certainly be a very competitive advantage. You simply don't see that many examples of it because this sort of technology is hard.
You can similarly point to the big database companies. Building a good acid compliant SQL database is hard and the big database companies had the market cornered for a very long time.
More recently, we have companies like Palantir which provide very sophisticated algorithms to their clients. Some algorithms are not just complicated from a software point of view, but you also need to understand the math to replicate them. It's not possible to reproduce them over the weekend even for an expert the domain.
The other things you listed are also very important, of course. But technology itself can certainly be a very competitive advantage. You simply don't see that many examples of it because this sort of technology is hard.