Karina viewed her staff as a competitive advantage. They had the necessary academic degrees, the necessary experience, and competitive salaries. Jean, her division manager, said, "Karina, until you have staff with rare and valuable academic research experience and corresponding degrees, and with talents that are world-class and in extremely high demand by your clients, such that they are willing to pay top dollar for that talent, your staff do not represent a competitive advantage. Your staff are too by your competitors."

easy to imitate

Explanation:

a person or an employ who is very easy to imitate is one whose character or how he or she does his or her work can easily be copied or emulated.

managing intellectual property is an important prerequisite of any business man or woman. if you do not, your work and every thing you had work for may easily be stolen by competitors. intellectual property may be your products and even your employees.

Employees become your competitive advantage when they freely give you the best  of their abilities and effort  in terms of them carrying out their responsibilities, giving best and wonderful solutions to problems, innovative ideas, good customer services e.t.c. and this may even attract your competitors to want to capture them especially with high salary upgrade and several benefits. staff who are in high demand for by other companies or competitors are also those with good education background, good track record of work and success to show for it, has also brought previous company innovative ideas and sort after ideas.