All tagged Competitive dominance
Rivalries in sport and in business are fueling mechanisms.
They spur us on to stay alert, work harder and innovate more deeply, to ensure we stay ahead of our competition. More often than not, that’s defined as one or two specific competitors. In that respect, competitive rivalries are a good thing - they keep us focused on the end goal and make us better. The greatest rivalries are the stuff of legend.
If you’re going to be in business, then you can only be in business to solve problems.
What I mean by that is that you aren’t doing what you do to simply ‘do work’, or to run a business (for all of the budding entrepreneurs out there).
You’re doing what you do because it helps your customer tackle a specific issue, something that they’re willing to pay good money (or some other form of consideration) to have tackled.
In my last post, I discussed the idea of competition and specifically, that it’s existence shouldnt act as a deterrence to us entering into a specific market. In many ways, it can act as a validating factor that should, frankly, encourage us to play in that space.
But the more pertinent question, at least the one I’ve been turning over in my mind, is whether that’s even the right focus.
Our natural reflex, when we’re evaluating a market, is to think of competition as being a negative factor. If there is a plethora of companies already operating in a given space, fighting it out for share, our immediate assumption is that this market is “taken” or that adding another player into the mix is a dumb idea.
This might be the case, but then again, it might not.
In my last post, I talked about how there’s always room for value when deciding to enter a market and that the key is in defining that value in a way that matters to the customer, and is profitable for you.
In this post, I’ll discuss the idea of competition and how defining who you compete with, as well as how they go to market, can and should influence your decision to play within a specific space.
Now, our initial tendency as we evaluate a specific market will be to consider the most obvious competitor in that space. This is our direct competition, and they are always the ones with the biggest brand, revenues, mindshare.
All too often, when we’re evaluating a new product or service idea, we get caught up in the notion of '“competitive dominance”. That there can only be one competitor who owns that space and, hence, competing in that market is a non-starter. Or, alternately, that there are so many players that that market has become commoditized. Either way, there’s no point playing in that space because the opportunity (for us) is gone.
