The Da Vinci Code is a mega-successful novel written by American author Dan Brown. The novel is a combination of murder, mystery, thriller, conspiracy tale, romance, religious expose, and historical revisionism. With sales of over 40 million copies sold in 44 languages, topping bestsellers charts all over the world and earning its author more than £140m, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is a global phenomenon. Numerous critics noted how "smart," "intelligent," and well-researched the novel appeared to be, a point that surely pleased the author, who insisted in interviews and on his website that his thriller is thoroughly researched and factual in all respects. In addition to this phenomenal success of the novel, it has been made into a movie which will be released on May 19th that is sure to attract a lot of attention, probably more than the novel did.

Several of the strategic management models that we have studied can be applied to the article in question. The one that particularly comes to mind is Barney’s VRIO model. Barney’s model takes into consideration a strategic resource or resources of a firm and how it adds value to an organization. In this case the prominent resource will be the “research” of ‘The Da vinci Code’ that Dan Brown did in order to publish his novel.

Value: The Da Vinci Code was a well researched novel that gave Brown huge financial success over his fellow writers. It's a book that manages to both entertain and educate simultaneously. It gives the reader a fascinating journey through the enigmatic world revealed through a seemingly endless collection of codes, puzzles, anagrams, cryptograms, and hidden messages; particularly the encoding methods developed by Leonardo Da Vinci, whose art and manuscripts are packed with mystifying symbolism and eccentric codes. The amount of exploration and investigation made by Brown to unveil all those concealed pictograms and cryptograms was huge, and valuable.

Rare: The Da Vinci Code is considered as a rare novel due to the fact that the novel tried to undermine the foundations of the Christian faith and of the Catholic Church in particular, and in a way that was never done before. It also portrayed this in the form of a novel rather than a “documentary” book, thus making the research and literary skills of Dan Brow quite rate.

Imitation: The Da Vinci Code will be impossible to imitate, and that is due to the copyright protection the novel has. This copyright will make it very costly for other competitors, in this case authors, to imitate the novel in all aspects. In case an imitation of the novel is made in a way or another, then Brown can easily file a suit against the offending party under the copyrights he has secured for his novel.

Organization: While Dan Brown cannot be classified as an “organization”, the novel’s publication is assumed to be well organised and without the efforts of the publishers, editors, booksellers, distributors, agents, and wholesalers, then the novel wouldn't even exist. Thus the organization of those parties aided the books popularity and Dan Brown’s literary abilities.

Strategically speaking, Dan Brown has achieved a sustained competitive advantage which solidify his reputation as one of the most skilled thriller writers out there. I believe that it is a book that challenges our intelligence and is a real page turner thanks to its many unexpected twists. It’s a masterpiece and is a "must read" novel that will never make you look at the Leonardo Da Vinci painting's the same way again.