Category Archives: competition

An analogy for using the Blue Ocean Strategy framework

in competition, Innovation, Strategy

If you’re a strategy guy, I’m sure you’re familiar with the , where you set out to create new value by not competing but rather creating and capturing new demand (new market) where you’re the only guy holding the flag.

In a nutshell, here’s what Blue Ocean Strategy proposes:

blue ocean strategy red versus blue

Sounds pretty damn good. But, the problem is it’s difficult to imagine and do. Worse yet, is it’s difficult to understand if you’re someone who’s not a CEO, strategist, consultant or marketer. To tackle this problem, I thought I’d uncover the hidden truth behind some of the key ideas of the approach.…

Rethink your business by what you know not what you do

in competition, Innovation, Strategy

I was talking with a friend business owner this weekend about growth opportunities. Our conversation took a turn when he expressed to me that it’s hard to compete when there are a lot of other businesses offering the same thing he does. Well my friend, it doesn’t have to be that way.

For the sake of being practical, we humans like to categorize everything to most simple things, rules of thumb. They work for awhile, but the problem is that sooner than later they become rules we follow and we never stop to think why we actually follow them.…

Beat your competitors by working outside their experience

in competition, Creativity, Strategy

fire dragon

 What is not different, is not strategic.

This past weekend I went to Ninjutsu camp (Otompo) for two days of training and war. First we train with some training weapons and at night we play war games that are meant to test our creative and strategic thinking as well as our hand to hand combat skills all under the light of the moon.…

Are you the best at something nobody needs anymore?

in competition, Innovation, Strategy

The antivirus on my laptop is and has been for the past 8 years. It makes me feel that I’m protected from adware, spyware and any sort of thing that can bring down my computer. It also makes me feel proud to say it because I know the Avira team is more than up to the challenge of staying ahead of my needs by making sure their ‘software’ never feels outdated.

 

Bottom line is I know they’re always on their heels and will work to keep their product ahead of the pack.

 

Why am I telling you this?

 

Remember the boiling frog syndrome?

 

If you drop a frog into boiling water, it will instinctively jump out. But if you place a frog in a pot of cool water and gradually increase the temperature, the frog won’t notice that the water is getting hotter. It will sit there until the water boils and boil with it.

 

This is what most businesses suffer from. They let routine set in and let the habits that brought the success before to blind them of changing opportunities, changing times, new behaviors to become outdated and irrelevant, in a word inertia set in. They failed to change and became the best at something nobody needed anymore.

 

The history of your organization is not set in stone

Because change is continuous it’s is very difficult to know what is next after you’ve made it past the first curve but merely accepting that tomorrow is not going to be like to today is a great place to start. This means you have to do activities that are different from the day to day stuff your organization does, it means of where things are going and then .

 

Innovation is all about change and this requires that you have all your senses in tune to what’s changing around you. The day to day stuff gives you no insight into what’s changing, it only reinforces what you already know which is going to become irrelevant sooner than later.

 

I don’t know how the Antivirus of the future looks like but I bet Avira has a good idea and I’m willing to stay with them because they’re in it for the long haul.

The imitate to benefit syndrome gets you nowhere

in competition, Strategy

Every once in awhile, I get an email that asks me to give out ideas (strategy) that previous clients used to achieve a particular goal. I’ve attached part of an email conversation below. It only explains part of the story, but let’s just say that I’m being asked for a secret recipe that they can plug-and-play and voila!

I can give you this information, but it’s no use to you because if all you want is to try to copy their success, let’s just say you’re going nowhere.

Best practices that worked for someone else don’t necessarily mean they’ll work for you. You shape your business based on your own strategy that works to your unique mix of strengths and weaknesses.…

Change not growth

in competition, Strategy

mexican walking fish

What’s very dangerous is not to evolve.

See that strange looking animal that looks like it was in the movie Avatar? It’s called a Mexican walking fish, or axolotl, and is one of the most bizarre creatures on the planet. Not just because of how it looks but because it has the distinct ability to regrow limbs. The mexican walking fish isn’t really a fish, it’s salamander and it’s closely related to frogs and other amphibians with whom they share some of the same characteristics.

Enough with biology class. Why did I put that picture in this post?

Because as bizarre a creature this is, it reminded me of how everything evolves and how different species combine or recombine themselves to form new species that adopt the abilities of others and so forth. We’re so used to seeing the same types of animals all the time that when we see something like an Axototl it seems alien to us.

 

The same happens in business, we get so used to seeing the same types of businesses all the time that when we see one that operates in a totally different way than the others they seem crazy to us. And you know why? Because we’re not evolving, we’re getting left behind and pretty soon the one’s that are evolving will put us out of business.

 

And then the cycle repeats itself. Where in the cycle are you?

I think it’s important that we be aware that we also must evolve. Consultants will tell you that you need to cannibalize your business, what they’re really trying to tell you is your business needs to evolve not because they say so but because everything changes.

 

To evolve doesn’t mean to grow, it means to change.

Like evolution, change doesn’t start in the mainstream where you’re sitting, it starts at the edges. Like new types of businesses, new species of animals are created at the edges and then some eventually move to the mainstream while others stay on the edge.

Do you think your dog, cat or fish has looked that way forever? Do you think your business will look the same way in 5 years? Do you think your customers will always want the same thing you’re selling? Do you think the industry/market you operate in will always exist, operating in the same way with the same players in 5 years? Do you think tomorrow is going to be the same as today?

 

The answer is: NO.

 

One last thought to remember and you knew it was coming: It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin.

Hopefully we’re all changing to stay relevant, not just in the pursuit of growth.